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.

I would assume Cambridge would insist on maths and English gcse but maybe they don't. Or her 6th form should have insisted she resit maths. But maybe she hasn't got it. She can spend her time doing functional skills maths because it won't be the last time she is asked about it.

I just read that article and thought things haven’t changed since my days and I am mid forties and graduated into the dot-com crash. Even in my days, all those who did not want to “sell out” because they were creatives had to sit around for a year or two doing odd jobs. Most eventually became teachers, journalists, joined the fast track civil service, advertising etc and to be honest, a fair few have done incredibly well. All 4 of these kids will find something, they are all articulate. Some will have to sell out to accounting or law etc, tough shit. Hardly anyone dreams of becoming a lawyer or accountant but bills have to be paid. You compose your music and write your novel on the side as a hobby. That is what a lot of my friends have done. Actually a few are published now. What you write is different these days, of course.
I agree nobody should be singing on at the taxpayer expense if you can easily earn a living doing online tutoring and English language teaching. All 4 of them have the skills to do that.

The biggest privilege these days is living in a City like London, Manchester, Bristol and being able to stay home with easy access to jobs once you get one.

If you do 10 GCSEs and go to Oxford, Maths GCSE will be in there! I took that as a possible dig at the council asking for a foundation maths qualification.

There will be people at all universities who don't bother doing internships, etc. This article has just handpicked a few students for the purpose of a very biased article. Obviously, there are many students at Oxbridge who have tons of work experience. My DC studied a social science, but did internships both summers; had an AI-related start-up before leaving and had raised thousands for this; has tutored online throughout uni; has worked overseas before even going to uni. They are doing all kinds of things beyond their degrees. It's actually mind-boggling how motivated and creative some of these young people are. It's the same at other top unis.

I can’t read the article. I have a creative arts degree (back in the 1980s) from what is one of the top art unis in the world. I had to get a job in retail - the same type of job I had as a 17 year old - for six months while applying for a design job. It was demoralising but I still needed to eat! I got one in the end.

I graduated just when the financial crash happened and there were no jobs, I must have applied for everything and anything and I remember being shocked that employers weren’t falling over themselves to employee me, a graduate!!! It had never even occurred
to me to apply for jobs before finishing uni, in my mind you graduated then applied for jobs, so I missed all the graduate schemes. I think there’s a lot to be said for having supportive parents or just generally being a bit more streetwise, some stuff you can’t teach.

Yup. Many the duffers from my degree course went on to do teaching and went straight into the private schools they had only recently left. Made me wonder about the quality of those private schools…

I think several things stand out to me. Not one had mapped out a career and worked out what they needed to do to get it. Clearly the grad going back to Grimsby has limited options but MFL teachers are needed. Why not train to be a teacher? She has 2 MFLs schools want.

Also the other degrees have brought benefits to the students in that they liked what they studied, but none of them have developed career plans. They have gone abroad, barely done any work or volunteering and have frankly, done little other than yet more study that feels self indulgent.

They do have some stellar results but they seem weirdly reliant on the kudos of Oxford and how anyone surprised their friends have jobs is beyond silly. Of course they were applying for jobs.

The last grad doesn’t even want a job. The others have ludicrously scattergunned applications. They haven’t directed themselves at anything. They all need to choose a career and start doing what they need to do to get it.

So what this really tells us is some courses do have people on them that aren’t remotely work focussed early enough, don’t do enough in their holidays, do fairly worthless masters courses and seem to think Oxford is a golden ticket and they don’t need to do the prep for a job because somehow their degrees are enough. It just comes across as foolish and entitled.

We all know that this is a terrible time for job-hunting, especially for graduates, so this is a bit of a non-story, although I was amused by one of the interviewee’s surprise that she wasn’t successful with the BBC journalism internship scheme.

@FruitNotCake One comes from an Oxford going dynasty! No doubt the family who went do have jobs. Times have changed though. Parents bask in thinking Oxbridge opens all the doors. I think dc don’t always realise they are falling behind their peers because the dc is at Oxford after all. It obliterates common sense.

ime, smugness is the biggest preventer of success. If your parents have done well and are bit smug about their educational success, it can lead to bright but ordinary dc and their families being complacent and a bit full of it. Success is expected, not worked very hard for and earned in these families. Nonetheless, I'm sure we can all feel smug and entitled at times, this article is a sharp reminder to not take your eyes off the ball and rest on your laurels. Although perhaps The Times will do an article soon interviewing the dc of very pushy parents and how they've burnt out and quit the rat race. I guess, we all just have to try and muddle though somehow.

But we don’t know what those jobs are, one reason of several why the article is poor.

My guess is that her CV said something like “10 GCSEs - all 9s” and didn’t explicitly state that included Maths and English. If the first round of reviewing applications was a box ticking exercise, the employer wouldn’t be able to tick Maths.

Maybe be overthinking, but you do need to make sure your CV explicitly matches the job spec. Easy to assume that it’s “obvious you have 5 GCSEs including Maths and English” if you have a degree from Oxford…..

The comments blaming the parents are wild. I’m not surprised, given how many parents on here are over involved in their childrens’ choices.

Comments have been turned off for this article.

The article seems to be an attempt to bash Oxbridge and humanities but all it is, is 5 stories about 5 graduates who haven't been able to find a job and when you read each of their stories it's pretty clear why they've struggled to find a job compared to other graduates either from Oxbridge or other universities. There's a lot of entitlement coming through and "Oxbridge will open doors" without the realization that times have changed a lot and that they are competing with excellent graduates from all over the place who will have relevant work experience, year in industry schemes, extracurriculars at university relevant to the career they are pursuing.

Kate
2:1 in languages, seems surprised that didn't get her onto the BBC Journalism scheme (extremely competitive); says herself that AI is taking over translation work (that's happened to me and I've had to close my translation business and do something else because no one wants to pay anymore when they can run it through deepl or another AI translator).
Got benefits and used the money to go and bum around Australia for a bit, not focussed on any kind of future career path so it's not going to look great on a CV.
Didn't explicitly state that she had Maths on a job application. Hopefully she has learned from that.

Sebastian
Double first in philosphy and ancient history. Distinction in MPhil at Cambridge Obviously extremely intelligent and very academic. Possibly comes across as too academic at interview and therefore not suited to many of the typical graduate schemes where they need a business head/work experience etc.
Says he divided his time between the library and the pub. The problem with that is that others will have been doing internships in the holidays, or running associations within the college or university and non-Oxbridge graduates will have been working and building up experience in term time jobs.

Jack
Offered an apprenticeship at PWC or a degree in History at Oxford and chose Oxford because everyone told him that he'd get an opportunity with PWC (or similar) after graduation. Daft decision really. He had an amazing opportunity with PWC and I can imagine that when he reapplied his name came up as having been someone who turned down their offer (not sure how the systems work but I'm guessing there's some way of flagging up previous applicants).
He whines about having to remove the name of the university from his application - sorry, but that's the way it is now in many places to remove employer bias as he points out.
Getting a 2:1 in History at Oxford is a great achievement but it isn't going to make him stand out for an employer when there are so many people who have that and so many people who have excellent degrees from other universities.
And then he goes on to moan about how the Oxford tutorial system encourages arguing and defending your position which is not how you should behave in an interview. Ok, but that's not Oxford's fault, if he has a brain in his head (which he obviously does) he should have been able to adapt his style quickly as soon as he realized it's not what employers want.
Of all of them, I find him the most arrogant although he has finally managed to get a job.

Eliza
She seems to have slept through that phase when all her friends were applying for jobs. Why wasn't she? Why was she surprised that they all had jobs?
She says Oxbridge opens doors but she still has to jump through hoops. Well, yeah, that's the way it is.
She says she "hasn't sold out", yet she's ghostwriting people's university applications.
I don't know what to make of her really, she's making an effort to earn money by doing various things, she might be successful in the long run.

Gabriel
He assumed just going to Oxford and getting a degree would land him any job he wanted. He acknowledges his own arrogance. He says he came from a state grammar where Oxbridge admittance was unusual so I can imagine a scenario where everyone was congratulating him and going on about how bright he was and what a great future he'd have etc. He was probably one of the very top students in his year at school and never quite got out of that mindset of thinking how great he was even when confronted with other equally bright and brighter students at Oxford.

@ShippingA These young people have come across as a smug. Yes. I’ve also known Oxbridge dc who just go home and are quite happy to do a little job because they and their parents have no goals for them other than happiness. Oxbridge doesn’t attract 100.% go getters. Some dc are quiet home birds and aren’t suited to the cut and thrust of business. As one dc says in the article, he was either in the library or the pub! Hardly great prep for work. Didn’t even get behind the bar!

I've noticed recent graduates applying to tutor in my subject on the basis of an Oxbridge degree. As post-grad qualified teacher, tutor and examiner, I find it astounding that their expectation is of an hourly rate higher than the one I earn (which is already a good amount!). Based on zero teaching experience, and purely based on an Oxbridge qualification.

Oxbridge or not, it's still just a degree. The institution doesn't confer additional knowledge or skill, just privilege. If anything, I find it gratifying that they can't coast into work based only on graduating from a privileged university experience.

What a non-article — it was exactly the same when I graduated in the late 90s! Humanities graduates often spend a couple of years trying to get entry level jobs and work experience: this doesn’t mean they are unemployable or the degree isn’t valuable.

I did a humanities degree at an Oxbridge college, and this was the case for everyone I knew. Ten or twenty years later those people were all in high profile roles and are now very senior in their careers. The kids in the article are 23 and 24: their experience is perfectly normal.

@ormiwtbte 100% spot on. I don’t think the article bashes these degrees but caution is needed with some of them and dc need more than academic study. However your observations are exactly what I thought!

I was recently recruiting for an entry level type role and had an application from an Oxford graduate.

As much as his academic achievements were commendable, his extensive cover letter read very much as though I should be grateful to have somebody as intelligent and accomplished apply for the role, which he felt was essentially beneath him!

What he failed to do, was demonstrate clearly how he met the desired and essential criteria and so he was rejected at stage one of the recruitment process. Which I’m glad about, because his entitled attitude was extremely off putting.

There is a huge misconception among graduates today that a degree is a golden ticket into a 30 grand + a year entry role having done little or no prior work experience, particularly if they’ve come from an ‘elite’ university.

I went to a uni entry info evening at my DS's school and one of the stats we were given is that there are almost 1 million degrees awarded in the UK each year, but there are only 200,000 graduate jobs. Now, a chunk of those grads will be foreign students who will then return to their own countries to work, but even so, there are a lot more graduates each year than graduate jobs to go around.

But it was ever thus! I graduated in 1997 with an arts degree. I wanted to work in something creative (journalism, publishing, etc), but the competition was stiff and the salaries appalling (no change there either). So I got an entry-level job that allowed me to move to London and pay for a room in a shared house, because that's what you have to do! The one who'd rather go on benefits than work is a disgrace.

The one who'd rather go on benefits than work is a disgrace.

How does a fit and healthy young person manage to claim benefits when there are jobs available? She should have been told to trot off back to her cafe.

Some of us did but you can lead a horse to water and all that...

In fairness, 40 hours a week at minimum wage now would be just under £26k so £30k isn't hugely unreasonable.

Plus graduates believe that because everyone, including careers advisers, teachers, often parents etc., are still telling them!

Even when I was applying nearly 20 years ago we were all assured that degrees, any degree, would earn us an average of £200k or something over the course of our lifetimes, which might have been true when only 10% of people had degrees.

I know the graduates in the article were older but they are only 17 or so, with minimum life experience, when they apply for uni so will be relyant on advice from others. Are schools giving them the most up to date info about possible alternatives to degrees, the importance of work experience, etc?

Even on MN you frequently see threads from parents discouraging their DC to get part time jobs, because school should be their focus, without realising they're actually disadvantaging them in many ways.