Did your son or daughter struggle to find work after university?

@HarryLimeFoxtrot If that’s the case, don’t offer courses advertising a placement year. It’s clearly unfair marketing. Often students don’t realise the university doesn’t have a bank of placements for the students who want them. Universities write extensively about their industry links and then dc find these are very limited or, at worse, non existent. The advertising of these “opportunities” that don’t exist, need to stop. Students need to realise, and be advised, that finding a placement is tough, time consuming, and down to them.

Yes placements have halved for the university we know in last year or so. Really sad.

It’s hard to supervise a placement student when your department is going through major restructuring (and is still expected to have the same output as before the last round of redundancies with 20% less people due to AI). I work for a multinational, and we’re not simply not able to offer many placements at the moment as we don’t have capac. We’re also barely hiring any STEM grads into R&D these days. It’s as bad as I’ve ever seen it (I’ve worked for my current employer for 20 years).

Yeah, it was a big disappointment as a years placement was heavily touted as being part of the course. It does seem to be a general problem atm from what I’ve read elsewhere.

Cost of wages and other employment obligtions/liabilities.

Lack of more senior/experienced staff in the office to train/supervise/manage them (not helped with the WFH trend!).

That's really sad too. Why aren't employers providing placements? There is a really big problem here.

I saw a grad scheme advertised on LinkedIn the other day which is restricted to graduates from 2026 and 2027. So they don't want last year's cast-offs. But presumably will be looking for experience. How exactly do you have experience if you have only just graduated...

And even some of the graduate recruitment fairs are restricting access too!

I know someone who graduated in 2024, did a Masters and has done a bit of freelance writing since. Two interviews, one for a retail job, the other for something related to their field but they didn't get it. It's really hard.

I don't know how many true entry jobs there are - but given there are close on a million NEETs between 16 and 25 (and those are the ones we know about) there's clearly not many. And then you have all the over 50s who can't get jobs too.

PWC boss said this March that they recruited for 1300 grad jobs in 2025. It is planning to increase that but they get 60,000 applicants so it’s hard to get a job there and plenty of great candidates won’t get taken on.

I think it’s a huge shame that some employers restrict entry to general grad recruitment to management/business and stem grads. It’s not healthy and it’s a narrow group think mentality. Actuaries are inevitably maths oriented but office functions like marketing do not need to be to the same extent.

I don’t believe the Private Eye figures either. However there’s not e high to go round and many are not engaged in grad jobs. They are jobs school leavers could do so school leavers miss out or people from FE courses.

I’ll have to talk to him about it, thanks.

Yes it was worth it, no, no problems with job hunting.

If he’s looking for PhD funding most is advertised this Autumn to start next year.

My DS haas just finished his STEM BSc but he’s not done yet as it’s a fast track MSc course and he’s got another year to go. I’m hoping that having a masters at just 22 will give him a bit of a leg up, and he’s keen to carry on into a PHD if the opportunity comes his way. He was supposed to have a placement as part of his course, but that didn’t happen as there were none available.

DS has a year left at uni but he did a gap year so most of his school friends have graduated. Out of about 10 close friends only one has a job.
My nephew is 18 and just finished college and he is struggling to get a job too.

I have a degree which I have never used - i wanted to be a psychologist but couldn't get onto any of the necessary post grad courses. I did voluntary work, paid relevant work, but still never made it. Without post grad stuff my degree is useless. I've ended up in a completely different field and the job I have I could have achieved with just a level 3 qualification. And I'm still paying off my loan 😆 so i have a slightly tainted view of university and getting a degree just for the sake of it! My son has done placements and hoping for an internship so I really hope his experience is better than mine.

DS did a STEM degree (Financial Mathematics) and got two concrete job offers with major UK insurance firms during his final year (He applied for around 30 and got short listed to interview stage for around 5/6 after going through the tortuous online recruitment tests/processes etc). He graduated in the July with a First and started work at the UK biggest insurance firm in August. All of his cohorts in their actuarial graduate scheme had STEM degrees, mostly Maths or Physics! Those on their graduate scheme doing other disciplines, i.e. marketing, accountancy, IT, etc had typically got degrees in Economics, Accounting, Business & Finance etc.

My Dd has a first from a RG university but didn’t apply to any graduate schemes. She didn’t want any form of corporate job. She went straight into being a TA at a special needs school. Now works in homelessness in the charity sector. She’s very happy. She knows a couple of people with maths degrees who did have big-name well-paid graduate scheme jobs but they left after a couple of years to go travelling. Three years later, they’re not back in the UK.

DS did struggle. We initially thought just going to a tier 1 uni would mean companies would be swooning over you

I’m 27 and when I started I intended to maths tutor as a side hustle and then when I graduated get a job related to my degree (IR). Still a maths tutor and love it, also I don’t like working for someone else so works for me. A lot of my mates (my age and younger) have good jobs after uni, but I only know one person who actually has a job directly related to their degree.

Thank you. That's very helpful. I'm a solicitor with a Masters degree but absolutely ready for a change and was debating whether it's worth doing the TEFL qualification and trying to maybe get into the "teaching business English" market.

DD graduated with a STEM degree in 2022 and, after having gained work experience during her gap year, walked into a job in a pharmacy (who paid for her to take a level 2 pharmacy qualification). This was never intended to be her career, but a job to do until she decided what post grad degree she wanted to do.

Placements during her time at university were pretty much impossible due to lockdown, and things were only opening up properly during her last year.

The soft skills she picked up while working have helped her massively for her diagnostic radiography post grad degree and she should be able to find employment once she graduates. It may not be immediately as the NHS employ in cycles and it depends if they have a recruitment freeze when she finishes.

I know of many young people who haven't been able to find work though. The hoops people have to jump through for getting a job, renting a property and many other aspects of life these days are becoming so onerous.

The TEFL market is pretty saturated for new entrants. Things have changed completely in the last 30 years. In Europe the only employed TEFL jobs are for the programme directors - teaching is done by self employed teachers on insecure hourly rates, responsible for their own health insurance, pension, unemployment insurance etc. Poland used to be a big market for new TEFL teachers but have home grown English teachers these days.

China is a big market but has age limits for TEFL jobs. There are some jobs in the middle East but not so much for newly qualified people with just a TEFL course.

A lot of TEFL teaching is done online now and rates can be incredibly low - below UK minimum wage.

There are ways to make money from TEFL in Europe now

Be the one running the language school without any direct employees (except maybe the cleaner)

or

Be the one teaching the TEFL courses ... For which you probably need a masters degree in TEFL.

Or as a self employed TEFL teacher with a business background you can put a lot of time into building a client base for business clients. There is still a potentially good hourly rate for certain people in that bracket.

DS always used to fall at the final hurdle until finally he got one offer

I was surprised at that number too, it’s so low. So I looked it up and this came up, I haven’t read more on the methodology though.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/aug/24/uk-graduate-job-vacancies-plunge-adzuna

No - DD did politics and got a job in Parliament working for an MP. Dd boyfriend did CS at the same uni and had a message via LinkedIn asking him to apply for a tech role with one of the FAANG lot. His financial package is beyond anything I’ve known for a grad & his prospects amazing. Given the news regarding grad roles I have been very pleasantly surprised.

What are they actually counting? If they're just counting ads, then those may cover multiple jobs. I don't believe 8000 - a quick bit of googling reveals:
PwC 2000
Deloitte 1353
Civil service fast stream ~ 1000
(& they take other graduates too)

Okay, so those are large employers, but they can't possible account for more than half.

No. Both my daughters went to good unis and got good degrees. Employed straight away.