It’s a prejudice we all have to live with; something affecting our relationships with our friends, our family, workmates and potential partners. While it can encourage some to escape its vicious circle, others will resign themselves to a self-fulfilling prophecy of late nights, bad skin and an ever-increasing overdraft. I am, of course, referring to the long-held view, generally put forward by a jovial, ‘young at heart’ uncle or family friend (everyone has one, they may get up at the break of dawn for yoga practice and meditation, practice magic tricks, write poetry or wear embarrassingly tight leather trousers) that students like nothing more than a tin of cold baked beans, a jumper with a pattern resembling the pavement outside Ziggy’s on a Thursday morning, and a spliff that would make Bob Marley’s eyes water.
Can we blame the BBC? The 1982 anarchic sitcom The Young Ones, about the lives of four mismatched students attending Scumbag College launched the career of the writer Ben Elton, encouraging the older generation to assume that students haven’t looked at a textbook for the past two years and exist on the ubiquitous lentil stew. The show is, after all, loved for its complete and utter ridiculousness, the brilliantly infeasible characters and its mindless violence; not for its accurate edgy portrayal of student life.
On the other hand, students can also blame their parents. A third year history student commented that “at the tender age of seventeen, I was assured by my father that simply completing a history degree at York would immediately result in everyone from The Times to the diplomatic service desperately offering me exciting, incredibly well-paid jobs involving travel, cocktails and attractive men in expensive suits. In the mean time I simply had to do a fair amount of work, try not to get too horrendously in debt or develop an addiction to Class A drugs”. She is quick to point out that “they aren’t naïve or stupid or completely blinded by pride that I attend a good university; when they were students in the late sixties, if someone had graduated from York then that was so impressive they would have been inundated with job offers.”
Yet their laid back attitude is totally at odds with the realities and pressures of student life; the older generation continue to assume that students are lazy, pot smoking, vegetarian activists who barely see the inside of the library because they did exactly that. One student said that “one of my father’s best friends struggled to hide his surprise when I admitted I didn’t really smoke that much weed, while my parents were shocked by my announcement that lots of students spend their summers doing an internship instead of working at the local pub or travelling”.
The stereotypical student evolved in an atmosphere entirely different to today’s austerity and financial insecurity in a nanny state obsessed with exactly how many vegetables we eat a day. While our parents may have been able to leave university, buy a campervan and drive to India before heading back to England and a decent job, we will be filling out endless application forms for jobs we don’t even want (graduate trainee scheme at McDonald’s anyone?!). While of course doing a degree leaves us at an advantage when entering the job market, we cannot afford to be complacent about our futures, resulting in the evolution of a student body which is increasingly hardworking and proactive yet far less optimistic than their older counterparts.
With rising numbers of universities and graduates, the uncertainty of employment upon graduation is likewise increasing; recent statistics released by the Higher Education Policy Institute have showed that unemployment among graduates has risen by a quarter, to 11.2% of women and 17.2% of men. With more students choosing to undertake vocational degrees such as journalism or accountancy and management, those graduating with a ‘traditional degree’ such as history, philosophy or politics may find themselves competing for jobs with graduates possessing far more job-based skills and experience. After quick browse on various graduate websites, it appears that graduates holding ‘traditional degrees’ are not qualified to do any of the jobs advertised. Without a degree in management, maths, social work, business studies or engineering, the ability to speak Farsi or Arabic and previous experience in working in offices, publishing houses or warzones, graduates might soon be reconsidering MacDonald’s.
Yet students have faced up to the fact that they cannot simply walk into a well-paid, interesting job, and have taken matters into their own hands; we have begun teaching ourselves the skills we need for employment. For those interested in the media, at York University alone there are at least seven newspapers and magazines in publication, York University Radio and even our own television station. Events such as the York Apprentice and the opportunity to participate in running the York Carnival are heavily subscribed to by the student body, allowing those interested to hone their financial and organisational skills. A history student involved in student media explained the problem. “With so many people graduating with an actual degree in journalism, who will be interested in someone with what may be a mediocre history degree?” she asked. “The only way I can even begin to compete with them is to develop skills such as being able to use Photoshop and InDesign, that way I can turn up to an interview with experience in journalism.” Competition for jobs within the heritage and art world is likewise very high, but students have been working within the scheme, in which History of Art students work with galleries in York to give talks and presentations on different works of art to members of the public. “Students are definitely more proactive now,” a third year History of Art student told me. “Through SAASY we have been developing skills that we don’t necessarily gain through our course; students get the opportunity to talk to members of the public from all walks of life about the art world, which can be more daunting and often rewarding than simply talking to our peers.”
Internships now seem to be one of the few ways in which graduates are able to make their first steps into their chosen career. While I may have been negotiating my way around the Indian train network during the summer, many others participated in internship schemes, gaining skills that cannot be learnt in a university environment and serving to give valuable experience that can help while job hunting. While Accountancy and Management is a more vocational degree than others, finding a job is still a huge challenge in the current economic climate, hence one student’s decision to take a summer internship in the USA this summer, working for a company that acts as a brokerage for environmental credit, a system that has evolved within the States for attempting to regulate greenhouse gases and carbon emissions. With students finding it necessary upon graduation to complete internships within media companies, newspapers and magazines, financial institutions and even charities, that may mean six months or even a year of unpaid work before the possibility of a permanent job appears, it comes as no surprise that many are choosing to get a head start on their peers.
Employers have been quick to respond to the demand for shorter internships or work experience during the summer break, creating more opportunities for those wishing to gain experience. However, this has resulted in the somewhat disappointing fact that for those who do not add to their CVs while at university the situation is fairly bleak. “All I want is to go to a publishing house or a media company and literally start at the very bottom and work my way up, the way you used to be able to do, but now it seem that you need 6 months of unpaid work experience to make the tea and do the photocopying” one student told Vision.
While the future may be uncertain for those graduating soon, what can be said with certainty is that today’s students are far more proactive and, dare I say it, conservative, than their stereotypical counterparts; organic veg-box schemes and work experience at the BBC have, for better or worse, replaced knitting your own yoghurt and the Summer of Love.