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

[reallyreallycrazy]

Slight hyperbole but not far off.

Yes, of course I suppose my DS should be appreciative of his 'white privilege' (I do detest the term though), but he's been applying to over 100 x spring & summer internships and apprenticeships.

Invariably, he finds that lots of programmes are only open to black/female/social mobility/ND candidates. In one recent case - a global consultancy - there were NO openings for anyone outside of these categories.

And today, on LinkedIn, he forwarded me several links from leading banks reaching out about apprenticeships etc. In most photos, you might be lucky to spot 1-2 white males and in the video of one, there were not a single white male (or female for that matter).

I get that these firms need to do outreach to disadvantaged groups but if you look at the population level percentage of the various group categories, this really has swung too far the other way.

I get that many of these organisations have years to catch up with diversity hires but to try to rebalance in such an aggressive way and in a short space of time, makes it very difficult for young, white males (unless they have qualified for 'free school meals') to get a foot in the door which is especially tough in an incredibly tough grad market as it is.

Of my firm's last intake of summer interns, out of 12 there were 7 white men, 4 white women and one black woman.

These things are ridiculously competitive. We had 135 applicants for 12 places (we're a professional services firm). All good candidates, many who would have been excellent interns but who got nowhere simply because there were far more applicants than places.

I would hate to think any of the seventy or so white men who didn't get through were begrudging the women their success and thinking they'd only been selected for diversity purposes.

why? we aren't talking about global scale so why global majority? UK has white majority.

I'm so glad that in my time of applying for jobs there wasn't this EDI insanity so no one ever suspected me in being diversity hire.

That is literally the topic of the tread.

So maybe you could share these lovely internships that pay an extra £5k for poor white candidates as they don’t seem to be advertised on the B of E internship page?

You appear to be very invested in claiming that it is misinformation but are ignoring all the information you receive contrary to that. I mean the RAF were literally found to be discriminating in court but that’s not good enough for you?

It's not just unconscious bias, although I believe that exists. It's actual barriers. Women have babies, so are pulled from the workforce. It's why groups have put fought for such stringent maternity protections. Disabled people often need additional accommodations. That's a disadvantage. Poorer families can't afford fee-paying schools that have a gateway to Oxford and then, often, to elite professions. The tide is turning, but slowly. Schemes that fight for equality are just going part of the way to even the playing field. And it is uneven, we can't pretend it isn't.

Absolute bollocks. I work in this area and the vast majority of our apprentices are white working class.

Try harder.

I said in response to a poster saying poor white people would vote Reform because there was no help for them from the BoE, that there were OTHER (in big old capitals too so everyone would know it was a different scheme!) schemes that poor white people could apply to. Its called the social mobility scheme and offers 5 years of support to low income talented young people, from age 16 through to their first job. The people who've benefitted describe it in glowing terms. And yes, there's even help to apply for bursaries up to £5k there too.
But of course that's not going to be good enough for you, is it? Because it's not the exact same thing the black people are getting.
Thing is, the black heritage fund is set up and donated to by people who want to use their donations to help black people.
To get the exact same thing for white people you'd need to set up a white heritage fund. Not sure how you'd sell it to donors though given you'd be hard pushed to show being white meant they were a disadvantaged group. But I'm sure you'd give it your best shot.
And yes, of course I know about the RAF discrimination case. The legal process was followed and the white people won. Which should reassure you that when white people do experience discrimination its dealt with swiftly as unlawful, so at least is not systemic.

I think you're completely missing the point of Spring Insight weeks. They are not the "real" internships that lead to jobs - which I've never known for banking or consultancy to require diversity to apply for - they are a simple week designed to give people with less likelihood of exposure to what finance is at its broadest sense a bit of a sense of it and encourage them to not be too scared to apply to the real internships. They were only invented to marginally improve application diversity and are incredibly superficial. I don't how it works now but when I was applying to banking internships a long time ago most the annual deadlines for the "real" internships (i.e. 10 weeks over the summer where you do real work) were October each year before the summer they applied to and having also been at the "picking" end of candidates attending a Spring Insight week provided no leg up in terms of getting them except they might have a marginally more polished presentation at interview. If your son couldn't find any to apply to was he just applying too late in the year?

Can you link to this scheme please?

I could only find a Bank of England social mobility scheme that offered 1 bursary and had a very specific list of eligibility criteria and a household income requirement of £30k. Hardly a similar offering.

At least you now admit that white people ARE being left out and discriminated against. I’m not sure why you think that it’s reassuring that the RAF lost its discrimination case (and I’m not sure how swift it was) - it’s really difficult and expensive to bring cases like this. You appear to have forgotten about the list of other organisations found to have discriminated against white people - MI5, MI6, GCHQ, Aviva etc etc.

Please just stop minimising and denying this is happening when there are so many examples already. I don’t understand why so many people are happy for discrimination based on race as long as it is against white people.

And I don't understand why you want so desperately to convince people against all the evidence to the contrary that white people are the real victims of racism and black people are advantaged over them.
But if that's what you really believe, do something about it. Like i said, start your own foundation for white people who are under represented and who have experienced racism due to the colour of their skin. If its the problem you think it is, you'll have no problem providing evidence to funders and the donations will come flooding in.

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

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

It's also worth noting that in the past, many Asian families would not be supporting their children going into banking as they wanted the usual dental, medical, engineering. So that was self-selecting themselves out. Of course outreach should help with that.

To be fair, if you look in the medical profession or GPs you'll see a certain generation where there is probably 80-90% non-white in these roles. Mainly because those groups were seeking those jobs and that education. Maybe we should consider why those who are white are not considering jobs in those professions to the same extent anymore. Does anyone know?

Nowadays they do say that spring weeks often leads to fast-track for the summer internships and some professions, the spring week is definitely seen as the first stepping stone...

I think that many (most) of the diversity candidates are incredibly bright and hardworking and deserving of their internships.

And I genuinely believe there should be specific schemes for groups who don't apply to the same extent to certain professions (even though in some cases, it's because the cultural norms stipulate that medicine/engineering is seen as 'better' so it's not necessarily a barrier issue).

But it does seem odd not to have schemes open at all.

It's just bound to breed resentment.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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