By Camlan Leitner
Remember Blair’s ‘Education Education Education’ speech? Such a sweet and simple premise! All the MPs and PM’s since have been eager to jump onto the ‘we value education.. and students’ bandwagon, yet I can’t say it’s worked out too well for.. well, anyone. It’s been harder to get into university (because now everyone thinks they should do it) and it’s going to be harder to get a job too.
Reading the newspapers at the minute (and faced with numerous fear-inducing facts and figures), I am to believe that as a soon-to-be graduate (though not that soon, thank god), I am fucked. Not only am I told that as a student today I have a 45% chance of getting a graduate job (according to the complete university guide table for 2011), but I’m also to believe that as an English student that chance is reduced to 28% (despite frequently being assured that ‘English is one of the most employable degrees!’). Should I just go crawling back to Starbucks now, apologetic for my previously foolishly high aspirations?
Although the prospects do increase with degrees from more prestigious universities, if I’m to believe all the negative hype, as a University of York graduate my chance of getting a graduate job is reduced to 76%, rather than the 87.3% chance associated with other universities of supposedly similar standing (read other universities ranking around the top 15- Imperial, Bath, Bristol etc.). Now I’m not saying that these figures are so undeniably condemning that we should all jump ship RIGHT NOW whilst we still have the hope of getting into another university and rectifying the colossal mistake of going to this one. There are many arguments as to why these figures, like so many, are irrelevant, most of which have already been highlighted and don’t need to be brought up again.
Nonetheless, with the importance of having work experience and internships on your CV rising, I would have expected to feel a greater presence from the university’s Careers Service. I haven’t a vague idea where the office is, or what it really does for that matter. As an English student, I’m told I need to have a lot of experience in journalism if I want a job in the industry, though you wouldn’t know it from anything my tutors have said. Now I’m not expecting it to be like high school where I’m assigned a placement and expected only to fill out a form saying I won’t smoke, swear or burn the place down, but I have to say I thought they’d at least mention it.
Then there is the degree class that you’re coming out with to consider. The Guardian claims that for 2010 graduates, nearly 78% of employers will be insisting on at least a 2.1 degree. It has long been the case that a third has been a relatively worthless degree in the job market and, with the rapid increase in the number of graduates, 2.2 degrees seem to be heading towards the same end. This is also reflected in the new A* grades for A-level being introduced- Oxbridge will no longer be looking for students with 3 As, but 2 A*s (for which you need to gain a 90% average in your A2 modules) and an A. And, whilst we’re on that, what ever happened to giving out places based on applicants’ individual merits? Long gone are the days when universities gave out unconditional offers to students who showed particular talent in spite of possibly lacking perfect grades.
And let’s face it, this is all down to the government convincing a load of impressionable kids that university is for them. What if it’s not for them? What if their talents really did lie elsewhere?
A Tory MP once argued that “more and more people going to university is an unalloyed good thing,” the problem being that this is all anyone has ever really said on the matter- there is no real backbone to this theory, no vast pocketful of money that has been provided to allow universities to cope with the sudden oversubscription of students. No vast expansion of the education system has been put in place (eg. There has been no real increase in the number of universities or the current universities’ ability to house more students) or great improvement to the primary and secondary schools made in order to better prepare them for further education. In fact, it seems to me that all the government has done towards this aim is magically ‘turn’ all the polytechnics into ‘universities’, which only really meant that they could write off the money previously set aside to fund the polytechnics, adding them instead to the already vast number of recipients of the government’s university funding (which, incidentally did not increase to accommodate this ‘expansion’). I imagine the bureaucrat who came up with that scheme earned himself a promotion and a half.
The point is that you have to do more than simply let more students into university- plans need to be put in place to accommodate these students once they have acquired a place at university, rather than leaving the universities oversubscribed and unable to give the excess of students that have been dumped on them a good education. I recently asked to switch from a dual honours degree to a single hons because I realised that choosing to do the second course had come from a gross misunderstanding of what it would entail (in short, I hate it), but I am not allowed to do so because the course I want to transfer to is already oversubscribed (a problem which the government is happy to fine a university for, but not resolve).
Whilst I couldn’t possibly be confused for someone with any real understanding of facts and figures, and ostensibly if you achieve a 2.1 or first class degree from a top 10 university the panic should be considerably lessened, it doesn’t take a top class economist to work out these are not the most fruitful of times. With my understanding of the situation, I can only urge the government to reconsider this ‘more is better’ plan in light of how badly wrong it seems to have gone. Short of that, I will be moving to a warmer, and hopefully more productive, climate.
I agree that it is tough to find ‘Graduate Level’ employment in the current market. It does come as a complete blow after all that hard work and study for a good degree. To be honest, I do not really know what a Graduate job is as many jobs out there just seem to be ordinary jobs marketed as ‘Graduate’. Could thisrflect the number of graduates out there and the need to provide adequate employment?
To be honest, I’ve read so many conflicting statistics on prospects for graduates that it’s difficult to know who’s telling the truth.
Though I am sick and tired of hearing the media saying that it’s one long bath of acid for graduates, because it’s simply not true. Graduate jobs are definitely out there. Granted, it has gotten a lot more difficult but not impossible. The key is refusing to give up, and that’s being made very difficult if graduates are constantly being told that they’ve wasted their time.
Take my sister. She graduated with a 2.2 from a smaller university, in a subject that Academia traditionally looks down on. She was told that she had no prospects and yet she is the one who’s found full time employment in a graduate job that she loves. The same cannot be said of several people in her class who got firsts.
No one cares that you couldn’t change to a single honours degree for Christ’s sake.
Utterly, utterly irrelevant.
I suggest you Leitner up.
Moderator: This may not be the Head of the English Department
‘Nonetheless, with the importance of having work experience and internships on your CV rising, I would have expected to feel a greater presence from the university’s Careers Service. I haven’t a vague idea where the office is, or what it really does for that matter.’
1. You could try looking it up. They offer a wide range of assistance to people in positions such as yours. That’s if you can fit the 5 seconds it takes to type ‘YORK UNI CAREERS SERVICE’ into Google into your busy schedule of scribbling your every inane anxiety and complaints onto the wall with your own faeces.
2. What does it do? It helps people with careers advice mostly, it’s kind of in the name.
ive applied for literally hundreds of IT jobs without much luck, i achieved a low first class hons… so good luck youll probably need it as will i.
Good luck, Mick.
“‘Nonetheless, with the importance of having work experience and internships on your CV rising, I would have expected to feel a greater presence from the university’s Careers Service. I haven’t a vague idea where the office is, or what it really does for that matter.’”
you bring shame to us first years! i hope the rest of the university don’t think that all of us are such whining, ungrateful, and brattish wrecks who are incapable of googling (or even facebooking…) york careers service in order to learn about it! honestly how have you even managed to write for campus papers without understanding the fundamental concept of RESEARCH. you do it for your university choise, your degree choice, and your career choice. http://WWW.GOOGLE.COM.
write it on the back of your sacred english textbooks, if you haven’t already burnt them in rebellion…
Actually anon, the author may prefer:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=york+university+careers+service
it jobs are very much in demand these days because of technology boom”~-
i like it jobs because it is a high paying job and you work in an air conditioned office .’,
As a recent graduate I can’t say this is the most encouraging article! It definitely reflects the same bleak picture being painted in the media. Although I am still finding it tough, even with a 1st class degree, there is certainly no need to lose hope, but rather to try different approaches.
At the moment I’m temping to boost my CV whilst still applying for positions, as it seems to be experience that employers are after. I’ve also been taking advice from graduate recruitment experts as they are the ones with industry knowledge. And as ‘anon’ noted, research really is key.
The reporter makes some fair points. I too have an English degree (1st from Durham plus a Masters in Business from a new wave uni) and I can’t seem to get a decent graduate-level job. I’ve been offered a call centre job with no prospects of promotion whatsoever and as I become more desperate my aspirations will be lowered to the level at which I’ll take a job which requires no skills or education.
I can’t help but think that humanities graduates were systematically lied to when told that their degrees were amongst the most employable.
I should have done an apprenticeship at 16 and considered uni later.
This problem affects graduates of all disciplines. I know Engineering and Medicine gradautes with 2:1 degrees who cannot even grab hold of a part-time job doing something demeaning like sweeping a bus station. I possess 3 chemistry degrees, and I apply for at least 5 jobs a week (because I fill out application forms PROPERLY, and I RESEARCH the jobs in advance).
Despite all my efforts, I never receive an invitation to interview. Sometimes I contact employers and ask for more information about the job in question – only to receive a reply saying my “application” was unsuccessful – when I haven’t yet applied! Bastards. I hope these “Have”s lose their incomes, jobs and homes, and I hope there will come a day when I walk past them in the street.
There are a lot of graduate jobs around. At least 7 come on Unijobs alone every day!