AND UNIS MUST STOP PROMOTING UNPAID INTERNSHIPS, WARNS NEW REPORT
Snobbish employers who only recruit graduates from elite universities – ignoring candidates from less prestigious institutions with identical grades – have been slammed in a new report commissioned by the government. Universities have also been heavily criticised for failing to prepare their students for today’s tough graduate job market – and for advertising unpaid internships, which exploit those who do them and exclude those who can’t afford to do them. And expensive postgraduate courses that are increasingly out of reach for poorer students were called “a social mobility time bomb.”
The criticisms appeared in third and final part of the new government report University Challenge: How Higher Education Can Advance Social Mobility, by independent reviewer Alan Milburn. A vocal campaigner against unpaid internships, Milburn was scathing about the universities that continue to promote exploitative placements to their students and graduates, saying:
“While universities should find more ways to allow students to get work experience, we are concerned by the number of universities whose careers services advertise unpaid internships. This is an area where we believe universities should show collective leadership. Unpaid internships unfairly advantage those from wealthier backgrounds who can afford to work without pay. I recommend that there should be a sector wide agreement that no university will facilitate any exploitative work placements of any kind.”
Here are some of the report’s other highlights…
ON SNOBBISH EMPLOYERS:
The report also slammed the snobbish employers who recruit graduates only from elite universities, ignoring candidates from less prestigious institutions, saying:
“…too many employers continue to recruit from too narrow a range of universities. The most targeted universities tend to have the lowest proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. When employers target the most selective institutions, the opportunities for social mobility diminish.
“At present there is a vicious cycle as many employers target a relatively narrow pool of universities, increasing the chance of applicants from those universities, which in turn leads to better outcomes for those students. This reinforces the reputation of the university, and perpetuates the status quo.
“Employers have a crucial role to play in ensuring that ability and potential, not brand or status, become the determining factors in who they recruit. The top employers in particular need to broaden the range of universities from which they recruit.”
ON DODGY SELECTION PRODECURES FOR GRADUATE PROGRAMMES:
Milburn also expressed alarm that the UCAS points — designed for the transition from school to university — is now being used by employers as a selection tool for graduate recruitment:
“One particular concern is the use of the UCAS tariff points as a sifting criterion for access to graduate recruitment programmes. The tariff was not designed for this purpose and using it in this
way disadvantages… those who may have taken less traditional routes into university, studying qualifications not covered by the tariff. All employers should stop this practice immediately, as it is both discriminatory and unlikely to be effective as a tool for identifying potential.”
ON THE IMPORTANCE OF EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS:
He said that universities were being too slow to realise the enormous responsibility they have in preparing their students for the world of work, saying:
“Universities are increasingly recognising their role in preparing graduates for the labour market once they finish higher education… There is, however, a long way to go before universities are focusing sufficient attention on helping students to acquire the broad range of skills that are nowadays needed to succeed in the professional labour market… universities have to do more to prepare students for the workforce and not just support them to achieve a good degree.”
ON EXCLUSIVE, EXPENSIVE POSTGRADUATE COURSES
Milburn was also concerned that expensive postgraduate courses — which are becoming increasingly necessary for those hoping to break into the professions — are increasingly excluding those from poorer backgrounds:
“There is a real risk that an individual’s ability to pay up front, rather than their potential, will become an increasingly determining factor in who can access postgraduate education. This poses an unacceptable threat to the long-term health of the UK higher education sector. Moreover, as tuition fees rise, those from disadvantaged backgrounds may be less likely to want to take on additional debt after graduating. Lack of access to postgraduate study is in danger
of becoming a social mobility time bomb.”
Milburn’s conclusion? That greater scrutiny of what happens to graduates after university is crucial. He pointed out that for too long the debate had all been focussed on tuition fees and access to university, saying:
“The debate on the role of universities in advancing social mobility has tended to focus on issues of access. The question of what happens to students once they leave university, and their ability to succeed in their chosen career, is all too often ignored. That needs to change.”
Few of these findings will be news to readers of Graduate Fog — you (and we) raised the alarm about many of these issues long ago. But it is encouraging that at least part of what is really happening to graduates is finally being recognised — and that at least some of the right questions are being asked. Whether the government acts on any of Milburn’s recommendations remains to be seen. But they will certainly be a useful reference tool for those of us who really are serious about making graduate opportunities fairer for all.
*ARE POORER GRADUATES AT AN UNFAIR DISADVANTAGE WHEN TRYING TO BREAK INTO THE JOBS MARKET?
Should employers be forced to consider graduates from all universities, regardless of their history or prestige? Should universities be banned from advertising unpaid internships to their students and graduates? Did your university do enough to prepare you for the world of work? Has there been too much focus on widening access to university – and not enough on what happens after graduation?
Graduates from different unis can never have ‘identical qualifications’ because each course is different (except regulated courses such as medicine). Is it as hard to get a 1st in History at London Met as it is at Cambridge?
The London Met graduate can never prove that it is, or that their work is equally good as the Cambridge graduate with the same grade.
This especially applies to courses which have very different entry requirements – eg top unis’ maths degrees require an A* or A grade in Further Maths A-Level, whereas lower-ranked unis will admit students who only have a C or D grade in the standard Maths A-Level onto their maths courses. This obviously means that the lower-ranked unis have to start with easier material, whereas the top unis start on day 1 with material that is significantly beyond A-Level maths. So the course content is different, and again, not easily comparable to someone who isn’t a maths lecturer!
It is too right that the graduates from better uni’s get considered first. Even if they are rich, they would have to have worked damn hard to get into Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Bath etc… I would definitely take that into consideration when looking at a candidate. It is an example that they have worked consistently hard throughout their life.
Also as mentioned above, a first from Cambridge and a first from London Met are completely different. Different subjects, modules. Not to mention the amount of funding each would get to spend on their lecturers and students.
But the argument that a first from Cambridge or a first from London Met are different, ergo the argument is junk is a false equivalency.
A University like Cambridge will always be stock full of the brightest students, but below that it simply isn’t a case of university ranking= level of prospective employee. For a start, different Universities rank wildly differently depending on the courses that they offer. Greenwich University for example is hardly a great school overall but for Architecture ranks among the best. Moreover, ‘good’ universities are often pretty shoddy in a lot of their courses but those candidates ride on the prestige of the university name. This is anecdotal, but my brother’s course at Goldsmiths is considerably more rigorous than any of the humanities courses at my own University, Bristol.
Also the A-level to University distinction is fine, but relays on a swiftly dying approach to higher education whereby people simply do: school, university, employment. Increasingly people will chose to go about their education in other ways.
Actually on that last point I’d like to add something about the ’employ-ability skills’ that university is supposed to teach you. It isn’t. Universities are there for you to study certain subjects and courses at rigorous depth and obtain a level of expertise in these things. The passions that you obtain, the life that you lead, the simple fact of growing to independence all make you more employable as is the need for you to be intelligent and to apply your analytical skills, but University is not and should not simply be a holding pen for young people out of school or a jobs farm where like the old 11+ we sift out the ‘wheat’ for office jobs.
It has always been the case that employers place high credance on candidates from a Russel Group University as opposed to a Red Brick, whereas candidates from Former Polytechnics should resign themselves to their obvious fate.
The story is nothing new.
i dont mean to sound harsh but with so many graduates coming out of university, employers have to think of more ways to cut down the numbers of applications, that they have to look through give it a few years and there will be another way that they will be cutting down the applications, and graduates will be moaning that it is to harsh to use that method
I find this very narrow minded. There are plenty of courses at middle ranked university which are just as rigorous as anywhere else, maths and physics spring to mind.
Oxbridge is different in that there is far less teaching and students are expected to be self sufficient. That doesn’t necessarily make their courses better. If that was the case, how is it that students can transfer to study masters or Phds, after attending lower ranked universities?
Sociologists have debated this issue for decades and only now has a preliminary report been compiled. Is it appropriate to talk about economic capital only in discussing the difference between “high-fliers” and graduates who get a 2:2 or 2:1? Should we not also talk about cultural capital as a central factor in determining a school-leaver’s choice of university, his/her time at university, and the destination after graduation? How many students are ill-prepared for university and for work, let alone ill-prepared for secondary school. The students who go to the very top universities tend to have gone to the best prep school and then onto the top public schools. Students who go to very good universities tend to have got there because of the entrepreneurial spirit and drive of their parents, who encourage their children to excel in their studies and sporting activities. Students who go to the new universities tend to have struggled at primary and secondary school, whose parents have not had a university education, who do not have the financial means to pay for extra lessons in summer, who do not have the “inside information” on how to ensure their children’s success. Such students tend to get Cs or maybe one B and two Cs at A-Level and can only apply to lesser universities.
There are indeed ‘lesser’ universities. I learnt that a university’s standing internationally is really based on the amount of world-class research it produces. The University of Derby only recently started to produce a significant amount of world-class research. It was a university that was on as much of a downer as its students.
Social mobility seems to me to be something of a Liberal ideal, which aims at equal opportunity but not guaranteed outcomes, certainly not equal outcomes. But everyone knows that this approach will always fail the majority of children who do not have the equal opportunity to get access to university than their middle-class and upper-class counterparts, as Nick Clegg acknowledged. Employers will always rule the roost with Conservative governments and their Liberal partners, who do not like to ‘interfere’ with free market enterprise. Only a Democratic Socialist government can tilt the odds in favour of the poor majority,
I agree that with such a large volume of graduates, employers do have to find some way to narrow down applications. Yet it needs not to be in such a discriminatory class-based fashion, does work experience mean nothing?
A graduate from a ‘lesser’ university with hands on work experience and a graduate from a Russel Group University with none, does surely not warrant the Russel Group graduate to be a better employee.
The employers should not being using UCAS points but real life work experience (certainly not unpaid internships that most cannot afford) alongside your degree. Does this not show a more proactive and determined individual rather than one which has coasted through public and private schools, whereby they are being pushed from teachers and parents, utilising the knowledge from ‘hot contacts’ their social network provides.
Seems everyone’s bitching about how they are better than others and the others are bitching that they are not treated fairly this country’s going down the toilet it’s so obsessed with class. Example: Newton was a peasant. You’ve either got it or you ain’t stop all the bitching and moaning and just get on with life I hate the bitching moany whingers more than I do the silverspoon spoiled bratts and thats saying something. Everyone expects too much just be happy with what you’ve got.
@MW, I’m really quite impressed with your analysis of social mobility. I’m sure Malthus would have been able to learn a lot from you. Perhaps we should return to a society based upon the natural order and allow Nature to determine the fate of people.
@Brian cheers matey. I got my degree as a mature student now I own my own business (about 20 staff) and tbh I wouldn’t employ any of these people on here. They all think that God owes them a living just cos they’ve got some poxy degree certificate. They have no clue their worth is close to zero in real terms. Experience is what employers really value not some whiney youth probably still living at home with parents who just read a few books and think they know it all. They know sh*t!
@MW, I was being sarcastic. Perhaps you were, too, when you thanked me.
MW – what an idiot.
Can anyone put the record straight and confirm that going to a less ‘prestigious’ uni has effected their prospects? I’m soon to graduate with a 1st in mathematics from Salford which is lower down the tables.
New article on the bbc website right now about the most recent league tables. Why dont universities just stop taking part?
I was doing some research into Swire who run a management trainee programme in Asia.
Every linkedin profile I could find were of graduates from Oxford and Cambridge, one from Durham and one from York.
Call my cynical but I can see a trend going on here…
I wish I knew about the class system before I went to university. By most people standards my academics are exceptional – 1st in physics with published work in a journal + 340 UCAS points. I am ignored or rejected from every scheme I apply to.