Oxbridge graduates who can’t get a job

[AquaLeader]

Interesting article in The Times this morning.

Meet the Oxbridge graduates who can’t get a (good) job -
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/oxbridge-graduates-cant-get-good-job-d9ddj9dff

It is unlikely to be a coincidence that the graduates highlighted all appear to hold degrees in the humanities.

My 16 year old has done more real life work and work experience than it seems some of them have....

This summer DD got a two day cleaning job which turned into two weeks and she's now worked a few shifts covering for the receptionist in the firm she was cleaning for. Because the lady took a liking to her.

I told DD to be proud of that. People working hard minimum wage jobs dont tolerate laziness or attitude in others.

She should be proud! It makes sense for graduates to take on temporary or fixed term contract work, not least because it can lead to permanent employment and it gives the employer the chance to check you out.

There are some odd quotes in there:
“A woman from the council informed me that my application, with an Oxford degree, seven A*s and three A’s at GCSE, didn’t refer to a qualification in maths.”
That’s written as if this council woman is annoying with her criticism, but if your degree is in French and German and you’re applying for a job that requires maths, you need to put it on your cv. Obviously.

“My theory as to the cause of my failure to find employment is that I divided my time at Oxford between the library and the pub. Within this (enjoyable) whirlwind, I failed to carve out time for internships and work experience. Perhaps these are the real currency in the job market.”

No shit. It’s written as if it’s an insightful final line to his section, as opposed to something incredibly obvious.

Plus the “I couldn’t face going back to the cafe so I signed on” nonsense.

Makes me wonder how AI screening does with ND candidates. Seems like a way to discriminate without being held accountable for discrimination. 'It's not us, it's the AI.'

You can work during the vacation, or you can get involved in lots of activities that will help you build those skills. I ran my college ball one year - leading a team of 15, working with multiple contractors, managing a 200k budget. Gave me loads to talk about in interviews!

I teach in a Russell group. Most of my students are ambitious, hard working and go onto get great jobs. However, some students are very blase about finding a job. They leave it until after their third year exams which seems madness to me! Some also have very high expectations and turn down very very good grad roles that people from harder backgrounds would jump at because they think the salary is too low (it's not).

I suppose as more and more people from a range of backgrounds enter senior positions there are less and less hiring from Oxbridge just to find people like them.

Teaching. You'll get a guaranteed job placement. Teachers exchange. Japan, Korea, China

Just start somewhere.

All of this. My daughters travelled Europe and did any job before they settled here. Me too. I have a similar diploma but made wine and also did other jobs in the rest of the time

Surely this cohort would have been particularly affected by lockdown, in terms of work experience. One said she had worked in a cafe before, but it was much harder to get even casual holiday work. The rising cost of employing staff hasn't helped either.

As parent of a DC a bit older, I do think it's much harder to get a job now. DS wanted to work in publishing, as I once did, but when I started I was doing photocopying, packing up parcels and organising couriers, sending telexes (yes that old) typing letters all that menial office work which simply doesn't exist any more. Now you need 3 years experience for even the lowest editorial assistant job.

Im sure it's the same in other jobs, a friend said when he started in banking he was doing incredibly mundane jobs sorting out cashe£ cheques and putting them in little drawers. There was much more entry level secretarial work around.

So many first jobs have been replaced by computers and the internet and no one thought through the consequences.

Several of my friends’ offspring have graduated from Oxbridge / Imperial / other top RG universities in recent years. One in Physics, one in Mech Eng, one in Materials Science & one in Vet Medicine. All got proper graduate jobs quickly, some had more than one offer and the Vet could basically take her pick.

Perhaps some of these young people should have done STEM degrees instead of humanities?

A friend's DC graduated with a double first in MFL from Cambridge, and works in a GP surgery.

DD graduated with a first in a STEM degree from a red brick university and walked into a pharmacy job, where she worked until starting a masters in a healthcare related post grad degree.

A degree, from any university, just allows you to be considered for a graduate role. It’s the first hurdle, alongside eligibility to work in the country uou are applying to work in. I have read application forms from Oxbridge graduates which can be summarised as ‘I am on target for/have a first from Oxbridge, what else do you need to know’. This is NOT true of all Oxbridge graduates at all, just some who don’t think tbey need to put much effort into the selection process, not just application forms / CVs but also preparation for interviews/selection centres etc. True of some graduates from other universities too, but just making a the point that a good degree from a good university isn’t an automatic guarantee of success in the job market.

They managed to be organised enough to get their Oxbridge applications in earlier than other UCAS applicants but it clearly didn’t occur to them that they needed to start planning their careers as soon as they started uni with the same early planning. I wonder where they got the impression that companies (usually publishers) would be falling over themselves to woo them when they are up against AI and an international market including equally capable students at Ivy League schools.

A lot of the people in the articles have jobs - their problem is that they aren’t careers so many of them have flitted in and out of employment. They thought they’d immediately join the industry of their dreams and are clearly unaware that people from other unis are hustling and capable too but will have been building relationships with employers years before graduating.

We have a fair few Oxbridge grads on book moving type jobs at the academic library I work for. These jobs used to be gap year or entry level age 16 or 18 school leavers. A few years ago the grads would not have applied for these jobs and would have jumped into entry level admin roles - ie the next step up. 20+ years ago mid level admin and before that graduate trainees jobs only.

The people they have chosen to interview in these articles don't come across well. They seem handpicked for a bash Oxbridge article.

The university targeted by more employers than any other is Manchester.

If everyone did stem, then those jobs would be hard to get due to increased demand and your kids might not have succeeded.
I believe in doing what you love( like at least!), and following what you’re good at.
Then you have to be realistic, you might need to start at the bottom. But never be arrogant because of your degree. The job market is tough, it’s not the protected cocoon of Oxbridge

I think the issue for many of these Oxbridge candidates is that the goal was simply to get into Oxbridge and then, latterly, to graduate.

My DCs have had it hammered home that the degree is just an essential component to a bigger project - yes they need a decent degree, but they will likely need a post grad degree/qualifiaction or professional training too. In order to achieve that they will absolutely need to add in volunteering, student union roles and/or work experience.

‘Having a relevant degree’ just ticks the first box in graduate recruitment; a 2:1 or first just ticks the next.

Friends whose graduate DC’s walked into jobs after uni tell me how the fact that they had worked for Tesco or Decathlon from A Level thru to graduating was the focus of their interviews: the employer was looking for people who showed commitment by working for one company for so long that they were able to transfer between uni and home branches every summer, for showing up/reliability, for the people facing skills (esp with difficult customers), for being able to work in a team along side people who may not even have a CSE to their name let alone A levels or a degree. THAT’s what employers are interested in, not their ability to write an essay on Athens in the year 2BC, or women in Shakespearean England, or even a research project on semiconductor device theorem. They are interested in how they will operate in the work place… sadly this does not seem to have been driven home by Cambridge or their parents.

"A woman from the council informed me that my application, with an Oxford degree, seven As and three A’s at GCSE, didn’t refer to a qualification in maths."*

Weirdly worded as that suggests she either didn't pass GCSE maths or didn't specify it on her application form/CV, as surely otherwise you would have said 'Yes it does - look, here.'

You don't need an Oxbridge degree to know that people might not care about whether you took art or history for GCSE but English and maths are fairly important and you do need to specify that you have passed those. People (or AI) sifting applications are looking for any opportunity to narrow down applications, they won't just assume because you have a degree in French and German, you must have passed GCSE maths.

tbf other than that she (the first one) does sound like she's done everything 'right.' As she says, jobs linked to her degree are going to be the sort completely wiped out by AI, and it's fair enough that nobody would have imagined how quickly that would have improved 5 years ago when she was applying for uni.

I also noted that she's the only one out of the 4 who referred to having a part time job in the holidays. When I got my first job after uni my manager told me she binned any graduate applications without any work experience, no matter how glowing the grades.

Nice of the second person to specify that a distinction is the "top grade" for us plebs 😁. There's a complete lack of reflection with regards to why, after not getting a job with his BA in probably one of the least practical subjects, a Masters on the same topic would yield any better results. He would have been better off working in tescos for a year and actually getting some work/life experience.

Third one is the absolute best, saying because he's a muppet who can't distinguish between an academic discussion in tutorials and arguing with the recruiter in a job interview it's Oxford's "archaic hindrance" of a teaching style that's to blame for his joblessness, not the fact he's clearly a complete knob.

Fourth - another masters in philosophy...again after acknowledging that her first degree didn't make her employable.🙄

I do feel sorry for the current grads - AI & Covid means they've had a pretty shit time. But not sure having your name published in a national paper complaining about how unemployable you are, and admitting to being arrogant/falsifying other students' applications (and I wouldn't be surprised essays!) for cash, or arguing with prospective recruiters, for every future employer to find when googling you, was a good idea....

From the article only one of them seems to have really looked for post degree employment in earnest while at uni. And one of the girls and one of the boys clearly wants to follow their dreams/create a career, rather than join the corporate world.

Yet they all talk about their classmates getting good, reliable jobs.

I think it’s probably a them thing, not an indictment of oxbridge.

My son has a humanities degree and applied to far more places than these ex students appear to have before securing a job. Do you know what got him through to later stages - the shitty part time jobs he did whilst studying in hospitality and kitchens. It is tough out there and 20 applications isn't going to cut it these days.

Just moving on to a I didn't get a job so what next Masters isn't probably going to necessarily help them either.

Interesting that whilst trying to put down the humanities students they (The Times) gloss over the students all refer to their fellow students having jobs lined up though.

Surely this cohort would have been particularly affected by lockdown, in terms of work experience.

Lockdown was 2020-21. What have they been doing for the last four years? And even in lockdown, supermarkets and warehouses and care homes needed staff.

If I was recruiting, I wouldn't be impressed by the young lady who opted to sign on rather than work in a cafe.

They almost all say "most of my friends have got jobs" or "I'm the last one of my group to find a job", and I doubt that's true of any other university a couple of months after graduation. These are five people out of a graduating year of, between the universities, 7,000. Of course there will be more than five without employment, but the article is still pretty irrelevant.