To Think that Grad & Apprenticeships are now only for Diversity Candidates

Have you rtt? There are many roles in the civil service for example which only accept applicants from a minority background. So if you aren't from a minority background, you can't apply.

Its not illegal, as our own government are doing it. Not that that means much.

There are not jobs that he can't apply to due to being white, that's illegal. There are schemes aimed at helping people from certain backgrounds to be ready to apply for jobs.

@BoringBarbie this thread is about young people not being allowed to apply for jobs because they are white, not minority, never been in trouble with thd police, parents maybe went to uni.

Your point that the ops son should work harder makes no sense. Surely it doesn't matter how hard he works, if he can't apply to jobs because he isn't diverse enough, and his parents don't help, what with them maybe been at university. Male or female he can't apply.

Our young people should not be punished . It its all about equality, and encourage diversity, everyone should be able to apply to a job that is looking for applicants.

So what if you are very able?

I'm academically gifted, on the border between moderate and highly. I can ace any unteachable test because I have a very high IQ. If I could be bothered, maybe I'd be a genius.

I am not at all motivated. I'm fine with that, I earn less than I might do but do the minimum required to do my job well and have no interest in advancing further. I have to really push myself to do enough exercise so I don't turn into a potato. I also have medical issues which cause chronic fatigue so combined with my general attitude I am completely unsuitable for anything competitive or fast paced. There's probably also an element of ND burnout which happened in my teens and I don't think I ever fully recovered from.

Put me alongside a person of average intelligence but with an excellent work ethic and the ability to survive on 4 hours sleep and I would be by far a less attractive candidate to any university or employer which is as it should be- they want it a lot more.

If your son isn't getting the opportunities you believe he's entitled to and has the ability to get, then he needs to work as hard as the people who are getting them. And if he doesn't want to, that's the choice he's made.

Competition has always been part of academic and professional selection. If some students put more time into study and preparation, the bar naturally rises.
That doesn’t mean others are being unfairly held back it just means the competition is stronger. Effort, discipline and preparation are exactly what most professions require long term, not just 'natural ability'.

There will always be a bell curve of ability across every group. Some kids are naturally gifted, most are average, and some struggle.
What you’re describing is really just different parenting priorities. Some families emphasise academics more, others focus more on balance with sport and other activities. Hard work and preparation don’t make achievement less valid.

@reallyreallycrazy you would still be frazzled if a white working class boy got a placement over your son.

You claim that Chinese and Indian students are studying too much, but what evidence is there for that? Graduate jobs are extremely competitive and lots of strong candidates miss out. Many families from different backgrounds encourage their children to work hard because they know they need to stand out. Saying Asian students only study and don’t do sport, music or other activities is a stereotype plenty of them do both and become well-rounded candidates. Hard work, ambition and good parenting aren’t limited to one race or culture.

Is that filtering for a category such as British Asian or including international students/recent entries into the UK? The devil's in the detail of what you're asking with Power BI (which is why I get panicked management assuming one thing when if they waited half an hour, they wouldn't need to send 34 shrieking emails).

ETA Have looked. So they are from applications submitted via UCAS. But you can't see if the applicants had entered the UK two and a half years before or whether they've been here since birth, or stack multiple filters to drill down to the finer details.

It’s interesting to consider London. It’s our capital city and it does not reflect the country that it rules.

Argh - but no - I hadn't selected by course. In fact, for Medicine, it's 36% white. The majority (46%) is 'Asian' (I'm afraid the distinctions are a bit less subtle than Imperial et al). Microsoft Power BI

Intrigued - and quite prepared to concede the point! I've had a quick google, and if the 69% stat is from the BMJ open national cohort study, that was looking at entrants in the years 2012-2014, so over ten years ago. I imagine things can have change a lot in that time. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be up-to-date stats on a large scale.
What was your source?

I did find UCL has about 41 out of about 334, giving a third London uni, with 12% white intake. Here

Edited to add: but yes, Cambridge's nifty admissions stat generator thingy, if i'm using it correctly, does suggest about 60% white admissions for medicine in 2022-2024

If we extrapolated the London data to the rest of the UK, then only 5-11% of UK medical students would be white. However, we know from fact based data, that 69% are white.
All we know from the London data is that 5% of medical students in one uni and 11% in another are white. We also know that this is obviously not reflective of the UK, because if it were, we wouldn't have the known figure of 69% white medical students.

On the fence. I would be more for a guaranteed interview for anyone hitting the benchmark similar to disability confident schemes to encourage diversity. There are reasons for ring fencing though and it's probably because unconscious bias means white men are more likely to hire other white men. It is a very competitive playing field these days.

What does concern me though is that state educated kids are struggling to get a foot on the ladder. Many are less confident and less well connected than their privately educated counterparts and not as well versed in selling themselves, my kids won't get hired by our employers or anyone we know unless they apply the same as anyone else. It isn't a new issue that people graduate or leave school and find that the openings aren't grad schemes or apprenticeships where competition is fierce and may assume some mobility, but often it's call centres and hospitality. But then I know a fair few people who have done well off that springboard and sometimes ended up on the grad schemes or engineering appreneships later on and I don't think workplaces are significantly different so that wouldn't be a possibility.

London isn't the UK, though

One in 6 people live in London, if you extrapolate to other cities such as Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester the figures would be fairly representative.

However the point still stands, London is an example of hiring focus

London isn't the UK, though, is it? 87% of the UK population don't live there. Only 36% of the population are white British, meaning the demographic isnt at all reflective of the country as a whole. So I don't think what's happening in London is more pertinent than the fact that UK wide, 69% of medical students are white.

As far as medical students go, that's not true of London at least: it looks like 14 out of 341 students in their 25/26 intake will be white. So under 5%.

IMPFOI-25-456-Medical-student-demographics-by-year.pdf

I imagine it's the same for the other London unis.

Edited (again): and 38/336 for the same year's intake at King's, interestingly, so about 11%. Medicine (A100) student demographics by year - a Freedom of Information request to King's College London - WhatDoTheyKnow

That's not evidenced by the official stats. 68% of professionally qualified NHS clinicians are white, 16% Asian and 8% black. 48.8% of GPs are white. So while not representative of the white population, its nowhere near 80/90% non white.
The reason is international recruitment of qualified medical staff to fill staffing gaps, because we historically haven't offered sufficient training places to keep up with demand.
69% of medical students are white though, so I'm not sure we're looking at a stark underpresenration in the training places that are available.

University recruiter, just hired 3 apprentices all white British, 2 male 1 female.

your reaction and comment supports the issue this thread is about. Perhaps that was your intention.

Another thread about how hard life is for white Brits? Do these bots ever sleep?