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.

@mathanxiety I think school based leadership from age 15, jobs can be very hard to come by. There’s issues with transport etc. Plus my DDs found jobs were handed out locally based on who knew who. So it wasn’t a case of just walking in and asking.

At university there’s still plenty of time to get going with targeted work or work. I think the idea of travelling is a bit problematic now if dc haven’t worked. Looks like a huge luxury.

Grads don’t have to start at the bottom but they do need to be able to demonstrate competencies. I would also expect these young people to have attended careers events and engage in how to write a job application.

true but then you also need to give grads a chance with or without the grad programs etc

"when I graduated and reapplied for the same management consultant role at PWC, I felt confident about my chances. Surely if they wanted me at 18, they’d want me now, 2:1 from Oxford in hand? Instead, I was rejected after barely more than a CV screening."

This was the quote that stood out for me. The PWCs of this world invest in apprenticeships because they can develop unskilled 18 year-olds into management consultants at much lower cost than developing unskilled 21 year-olds into management consultants! They do still employ many graduates - but they are graduates with valuable grad-level skills in things like computer science or statistics. That, and the increase in graduate numbers, is why it has become more difficult for graduates to secure an "any degree" job.

Honestly articles like this strike fear into me. Dd2 is bright would definitely be able to get to university very personable / stylish and gets on brilliantly with people. I wonder if she would be better off getting a lower down job in fashion after a levels and working her way up rather than doing a fashion type degree and getting £60k in debt.

Different for careers like law etc. But would be sad that she misses out on being a student and worry it may be an issue later. That said as my friend pointed out those golden student days are likely golden because you are 21 and living in a new city which would also be the case if working.

These articles are meant to be fear-mongering in my opinion. Look at these brilliant Oxbridge graduates who can't get a job, must be even harder for everyone else who hasn't gone there etcetc.
Look at the article in detail and you'll see clear reasons for each one why they would struggle to get a job and you can also see what they could have or can do differently to help their chances. I've written more about this upthread.
This means there are things there that your daughter can learn from to give her a better chance of getting the ob she wants.

As for your question about whether it would be better to get a "lower down" job in fashion and work up or do a degree, I think all you can do is explore options with her, see what is out there, are there apprenticeships, what are typical career paths like, work experience etc. and then see what direction she wants to go in. Gather as much information and experience as possible and then she can make an informed choice.

Thank you for your response. So difficult advising them these days isn’t it as everything seems so different from when we navigating this in the 90s.

To the student interested in fashion. I’d say yes do a year out and try and get a job at a very good indie clothes shop. They would learn a lot by osmosis - seasons, stock management, customer care, marketing etc and then if they do a degree course they can apply real world examples (and have cash in the bank)

@TheaBrandt1Fashion is a huge problem area. DD2 did a fashion degree at LCF and it lead nowhere, other than unpaid internships. It’s a horrible industry and all about who you know.

As for getting a school leaver job ? Extremely difficult. Again who you know is key. Do you know anyone?

@TheaBrandt1 DD did the clothes shop bit. That’s not very useful for fashion degrees as it’s merchandising. Obviously depends on what career she wants but my DDs retrained for something else and it’s got a decent career structure and she’s earning money!!!

The people who I know who did fashion all got jobs really fast. For retailers as buyers eg tk maxx, next and Marks and Sparks. They tend to be buyers rather than designers. I guess it depends on what the student wants. Loads of online retail opportunities

Yes I do know people. Dd does too connections made herself through modelling. Dh and I question the value of the fashion related courses. But slightly breaks my heart if she doesn’t go to university as she’s academic and a great reader so she could happily do a degree in english lit or similar.

@TheaBrandt1 Well she’s got a head start then. Thousands don’t and buying is fairly niche. Plus retail is in turmoil with lots of redundancies. As I said, it’s who you know in general.

I agree with PP that the people interviewed seem to have been handpicked to make a journalistic point.
However, they are all rather arrogant to think they can just waft into a dream job with academic qualifications, no experience, and in the case of one person defending his own opinions and challenging the interviewer. None of them impress with any experience of working and no willingness to compromise. I would imagine not easy to work with as part of a team.
i don’t think their attitudes or expectations can be generalised to all Oxbridge graduates, there must be some with more advanced personal skills and willingness to learn about the world of work.

So many industries are due to AI! Most of the tasks I did as a trainee solicitor are automated now! That’s why we find it so hard to advise

I agree with PP that the people interviewed seem to have been handpicked to make a journalistic point

I think they're simply all friends with the author of the article.

Agree. I used to share a flat with a tabloid journalist in my twenties and I often featured in her mad magazine articles.

Exactly TheaBrandt1. Not sure it says anything profound other than he (and some of them) want to make a go of it in journalism. He's the same age as the four interviewees and read the same subject as one.

I am talking about graduates who have a solid work history featuring reliability, leadership, initiative, responsibility, the ability to read the room and deal with difficult people from age 15 on.

Simply showing up at age 21 with your parchment doesn't cut it any more and hasn't for a long, long time.

Employers invest a lot in the graduates they hire. Many have intensive training programmes vwhere you learn the ropes, and many have a work culture that would blow the socks off a young person who has not been used to keeping several plates in the air at the same time from their teen years - juggling demands of homework, studying, part time jobs or volunteering, and perhaps a sport or dance or music, etc.

No employer owes a graduate anything. You are hired to be productive at a high level and are expected to hit the ground running, drawing on your years of varied experience in workplaces as well as the expertise your education has given you.

I don't think it is uncommon at all for straight A students to not even consider Oxbridge. Perhaps it is in your DDs grammar school...?

With regards tutoring as part-time work Vs say McDonalds, the problem with that is it's the sort of thing everyone adds to their CV or Linkedin even if they have only tutored a few times. It's easy to embellish. Employers might not take much interest in it. It doesn't demonstrate the basics an employer wants to be sure of. But, if she's used to tutoring children, she might be able to get a summer job working with children that substantiates her experience a little more. Some of the language colleges pay well for activity leaders

Dd1 has waitressed at same place for 5 years now and has been made head waitress. She’s dealt with the public with all that entails. Discussing with hiring partner at a local solicitors firm he sees that as a massive green flag he just gave a much coveted training contract to the girl with a similar work history over others with marginally “better” universities but no real life experience.

Unless you have a DC who has graduated last year or this year, you have no idea how difficult it is for graduates to get graduate jobs. It's a mixture of many things. University expansion, backlog from the COVID years, employers cutting schemes due to uncertainty in the world, national.insurance rises - it's easy to make cuts from your grad schemes and internships - favourable overseas visas ( the minimum salary for a visa is less for a new graduate or under 26 year old meaning even more competition for jobs.)

HR is outsourced. It can seem so random getting right through to interview or getting rejected 20 minutes after submitting your application at 10pm. Hours and hours are needed to prep for the application, multiple HR interviews, online tests, videos etc... and then if you're through to assessment centre it's another week of prep. I expect there are many today who work in high flying career roles who would also have struggled had they had to compete with such numbers and jump through so many hoops.

DD is lucky to have secured a graduate scheme a month after graduating and she spent the year applying to 70 roles. She's an A* student from a top 10 university with a STEM degree and a paid year in industry. You can have all the right credentials and you still need a hefty dose of luck. There were 2000 applicants for 7 roles. All her friends have jobs, luckily, but she can see on linkedin many of her cohort do not and they too are top students who did all the right things.

The Oxford grads in the article might represent the last of the cohorts that have been complacent. Unless they have their heads buried in the sand, upcoming graduates have to be aware of the shortages of graduate jobs and where you went to university won't open the doors it once did.

We can keep blaming young people but it's not helpful. There aren't enough graduate jobs, there aren't enough opportunities or jobs full stop for young people leaving school at 16 or 18. We'll end up with a lost generation or brain drain, where many of our brightest graduates go to work abroad.

Employers have their own biases and often recruit in their own image. Oxbridge purists are more likely to value an Oxbridge degree than employers from other backgrounds, but they are an old fashioned breed. As corporate leadership becomes more diverse, so does recruitment.

How about the politicians scrap the extra NI for under 30s from this country? Actually help get a lot of these youngsters into work?
This country is currently anti young and anti supporting families and all pro the old boomers. It needs to stop if they want us to grow.

Hard agree there.

It’s actually crazy how this older generation now have been so prioritised and protected. They’ve had their share - we have to prioritise the young now - for all our sakes