Michelle Rodger: Graduating with a degree of flexibility

Published on Saturday 24 January 2009 12:41

COMPETITION among graduates will get several degrees more difficult this year as the recession begins to eat away at their career opportunities.

As recently as September 2008 employers were still expecting to recruit higher than usual numbers of graduates in 2009, but a survey has revealed the recruitment targets at Britain's top employers have been cut by more than a sixth in the past four months alone.

Virtually every major employment sector has been affected, but the biggest losses have been in investment banking, where entry-level jobs are almost 40% lower than in 2007. Nearly 3,500 new posts have been withdrawn in the past year.

Only the public sector and the armed forces are expected to increase the number of graduate employees this year.

Many major corporates are slowing down their graduate recruitment programme; firms such as HSBC, Morgan Stanley and Rolls-Royce have cut their intake by a fifth. Some of the leading investment banks have already fulfilled their requirement for this year, several are reported to be recruiting only from institutions such as Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College. And Heinz, for example, has disbanded its 2009 graduate scheme completely.

It smacks of the downturn earlier this decade when well-known recruiters such as Ford, British Airways and Marks & Spencer tried to reduce costs, pulling out of recruitment programmes and even withdrawing offers to graduates.

Graduates who believe their qualification means a guaranteed job are getting a rude wake-up call. I've read reports of students with two or more degrees sending in excess of 200 applications to no avail.

Clearly something has to change. Either the graduates take a few extra gap years while they wait for the recession to come to a close, or we have to address the way in which our students are educated. Is it sensible to have tens of thousands studying finance with a view to working for PWC or KPMG, when they won't actually get a job at the end of their university courses?

The perfect example in Scotland is teachers; one in four new teachers is out of work. Of the 3,426 probationary teachers last year, only 770 have found permanent positions, so what hope is there for this year's eager probationers?

But any attempts to align education with the needs of business and the wider economy are met with disdain and allegations of interference from academics.

Education Minister Fiona Hyslop and the SNP have worked out a series of proposals to ensure universities tailor their courses more closely to the needs of the economy. Hyslop said their key ambitions will be to "better develop entrepreneurial capacity and graduate employability, to work actively with employers to ensure skills learned during courses at college or university can be utilised to best effect in the workplace".

Now that's an innovative approach for any political party, but it appears this entrepreneurial initiative – spot a gap in the market and fill it – is just too innovative for our ancient universities, who believe the interference is tantamount to "betrayal".

If they ran a business they would be driven by the economic forces of supply and demand. When demand decreases, there's no point in flooding the market place with unwanted product. The challenge is to balance the two, or develop a newer, better product which will whip up demand to compensate.

So flooding the market with highly educated but barely experienced young people is simply wrong. Education must move with the times and prepare our youth for the future as the worldwide economy sees it, not as it appears to be seen currently from behind a desk in a cosy office on a blinkered campus with one eye on the results league table and the other on what the other universities are doing.

Nobody likes to be told they are getting it wrong, or they have to change. But surely it makes sense for kids to gain an education and qualifications in areas that will underpin the economy securely for the future?

Speaking as someone without a degree – and without the chip on the shoulder that usually accompanies said piece of paper – it's not the be all and end all. There will always be jobs for people with lesser qualifications, just as there will always be jobs for graduates.

As an employer and a parent, I'd like to see better information and wider choice of occupation promoted in schools prior to the pupils making their decision on what to study in further education.

Perhaps there is an onus on the industries that are struggling to find suitably skilled individuals to make themselves more attractive to secondary school pupils who are wondering what on earth to do when they leave school.

Perhaps the Government could consider wider financial support for SMEs to create apprenticeships and internships.

And perhaps the graduates themselves could widen their horizons and consider unpaid work experience or use their skills to start up their own businesses rather than wait for the recession to end.