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.

@TheaBrandt1 Unfortunately it’s politics! Esther Ranzen immediately on the radio saying old people need xyz! Plus older people vote! Many are of course well off but won’t accept that they are. It’s obviously blinkered but many will help to set up the younger generation and it’s not all doom and gloom.

@Araminta1003 All people working beyond 65 should pay NI. There could be a 50% rate levied on unearned pension income. I think a reduced rate for under 30 is a good suggestion. Not no NI. There needs to be some paid or everyone loses out. We need to be more creative.

It doesn't matter how many young people vote. There are so many older people that they will always be outvoted. My children are lucky that they have grandparents who are wealthy ( purely through property) so may be able to get a deposit for houses but some people won't, and my children won't be wealthy enough to never have to work. They'll just have a house deposit hopefully. But I am concerned they won't get the opportunity. My DC want to work abroad. It may not be all doom and gloom here but we have long had an anti child/yp attitude that didn't really matter when demographics weren't so skewed to the old but does now. The attitude is that we'll screw over the young and just mock their concerns because they drink too many coconut lattes.

I stupidly used to think university prestige mattered and that employers looked and cared about it.

Also, the recent graduates are those first cohort who took the new content-heavy, numbered GCSEs, followed by the linear content-heavy A levels. Many of our brightest students have not been able to take their foot off the pedal since they were 14. They spent part or all of their GCSE/A level years with covid lockdowns. They faced immense stress when exams were canceled. Many of them couldn't get the usual retail or hospitality jobs. I think they can be excused for not having it all worked out. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

We ought to be grateful any of our young people work at all as the rewards for that which we took for granted (like a secure home) are taken away from them.

Yes the older demographic have all the political power because of the sheer number of them now, but young people also need to take responsibility and vote and take an interest in politics.
The NHS is incredibly good at keeping people alive for as long as possible, which of course is great, but there is also no priority system to get people of working age, who have illnesses directly affecting their work/productivity, right to the top of waiting lists. Which is completely absurd if you think about it. I am talking late 40s to mid 60s who could still work if they get prompt healthcare (as they would in many other European countries).
Many young do not want to have families as the entire social structure is no longer there to support them directly. So the amount of workers to pensioners diminishes even more and we have to invest in the next generation.
All of this is leading to political instability and the young who do have families are working so hard they do not even get the time to protest.
If we actually care about democracy and care about the NHS surviving then we need to address all of this.

I am very suspicious of the narrative in the media that going to university is a waste of time. They just want the young to start working as soon as possible and pay tax to support the older demographic. Of course young people should be really mindful of picking the right course and getting fair value, but they should not be swayed completely by the whole narrative of uni is a waste of time. I do not think it is. I think a younger demographic not as fully educated to the highest level to slave away for the rest of us middle aged and older suits them absolutely perfectly.

I am also willing to bet that eg Scandi countries and Switzerland etc will make sure that AI is managed properly not to just be allowed to take jobs. The cost to society is huge and data centres will eat up huge amounts of energy and directly contradicts the green agenda. A lot of it is in direct conflict with corporate social responsibility.
I think efficiency and leisure time is important for all, but all of this stuff requires a proactive, forward thinking and strong Government. Not one that caves to the media constantly and public opinion too much/social media influenced public opinion.

I think any genuine sense of “corporate social responsibility” went out of the window decades ago.

I agree . There's someone at my work, well over retirement age and can't really do the job. They don't need the money, I think its more about not accepting that they are retirement age.

They're very well versed in the law and anti ageism, but meanwhile they are lots of young bright people out there wanting jobs...

My niece is at Oxford. All her contemporaries went straight from school, no work experience or gap years. They are all quite immature too. She is from a state school and had a year of travelling and working before she went and finds it a struggle.

I can’t read the article.

But I will never forget an acquaintance of mine who had a degree in English from Cambridge claiming that “I’m overqualified for 90% of jobs out there” 🤦‍♀️

She’s mid 40s now and has bumbled along through many, many jobs, mostly in recruitment and similar.

She has lost more than one job due to repeated lateness, sleeping through her alarm and just general disorganisation.

She changed jobs constantly. She is hugely overconfident and talks the talk, but when it comes down to it, she just can’t walk the walk.

She was precocious and at age 10 looked, presented and spoke like a very confident 18 year old.

I can remember adults being quite flummoxed by her.

But she peaked far too early. She got into Cambridge at age 16 but by age 19 or so her peers had far surpassed her and her large vocabulary and confidence just wasn’t enough to get her through.

I last saw her around 6 months ago. Her life has totally stalled.

I know a fair few people who went to Oxbridge though and I think she is the only one who has not been successful.

@newtvnewsofanewcomputer if you read the first few comments of the thread you'll see someone posted an archived version of the article so you can read it for free.

I agree, I assumed as a naive kid that you went to school to get to uni and you went to uni to get a job. Neither of my parents had gone to uni or had a clue about the working world beyond our small village. I had no idea that even back then a degree wasn't enough just to assure you a job. I was so clueless tbh and I can't blame any of the kids in this article, I mean I too would assume that saying you had 10 GCSE's at A and A star would allow someone to infer that you had GCSE maths. I mean who would think you could get into Oxford uni without a maths GCSE?

I had a bit more of an idea than my parents and said to DS that he needed a cv full of stuff showing his interest in his subject and soft skills if he wanted to apply for degree apprenticeships. The process was gruelling and certainly eye opening - almost certainly worth kids going through just to get an idea of what lies ahead, even if they end up going to uni IMO.

I also said to DS that if he went to uni instead he was going to need to have evidence of all these skills and more when he came out, because if he thought the competition was fierce now it was only going to get worse! So that would mean a part time job, volunteering, joining and eventually running society's for leadership experience and a relevant internship.

He did get a degree apprenticeship though and absolutely loves it, I think what we really need are far more degree apprenticeships because there is a lot of competition for relatively few places.

My guess would be that she's ND. The precocious/like an adult as a child bit - did she talk 'at' people?, the large vocabulary, the poor executive function, the jumping from job to job when she didn't fit in or know why, feeling lost and not knowing what went wrong, the not living up to expectation - it's all very typical of people who are ND, I'd think she was probably autistic.

Only read first person (languages) but the council feedback sounds like us (also local govt) we require min of pass in eng and maths at gcse as essential criteria it’s a council wide requirement for most roles and if you don’t say you have it on cv you can’t meet criteria for interview plus it shows you can’t read details if you have maths gcse and haven’t put it on cv which is a crucial skill in work my team does.
Lack of paid work on cv. I look for graduates with customer facing paid work on cv. She’ll have had 25 weeks a year off uni, what has she done in that time. If cv is blank I have to assume done nothing.

As far as I know, she’s not, and she says herself she’s not.

she has suffered from poor mental health over the years, including depression and anxiety, but no neurodiversity as far as I know.

She did stick out like a sore thumb from a young age and I feel people probably expected too much from her at a young age. But I think she was just sold a story that many of us were - get a good degree from a good uni and you’ll be set.

In reality, she was very good at English from a young age, but by her degree she was nothing remarkable. She got a 2:1.

Whereas she struggled hugely with maths and science, which I think has really let her down.

As for myself, I didn’t go to Oxbridge, but I got a good degree from a good uni, but very much agree with what @PennyAnnLanesays - I had no idea about applying for grad jobs etc. as a result I ended up in some poorly paying jobs in my early 20s. This was before the advent of social media etc so I didn’t really know what my peers were up to as it was harder to keep in touch.

i realise now that they were on grad pathways with careers marked out.

I’m on the right path now, in my late 40s, but I very much took the long road.

Tbh, that just comes across as very silly. Very few schools accept students onto A-level courses without a pass in GCSE maths and English, unless they retake and pass them in the first year of sixth form alongside their A-level study, and Oxford certainly wouldn’t have accepted any of them onto their degree without extremely good grades in both of those subjects, so there would be no genuine doubt in anyone’s mind that the girl had passed those GCSEs. She clearly had too high an opinion of the common sense of the potential employer, or a belief a potential employer wouldn’t themselves be a belligerent bellend.

It's much more likely the application form was being read by computer software for first sift and the application would not make it through if maths wasn't explicitly stated. The computer software can't deduce Oxford degree = maths GCSE. It might not even be true in 100% of cases.

Maybe there should be more articles written about the inadequacy of employer recruitment strategies, then.

DD1, First class STEM Oxford grad, gave up with grad schemes. She couldn't get past the online tests. The feedback she got was just so off the mark it was ridiculous. She did get to final round of MI5, but was the youngest there, and that unfortunate played against her,

In the end she applied direct to known Oxbridge recruiters, and was offered a job after her first interview. Oh, the joy of actually communicating with a human being. She is still there 7 years later, several promotions, great pay and t&c's etc.

You are probably right as Charlie Aslet writes for the Times about his gap year before Oxford, being at Oxford and life since Oxford, graduating last summer.

I think grads from any top flight uni could have been included, in the same way as 4 years earlier some would have been shocked not to have received an offer or Compsci/economics from. UCL/LSE/Oxbridge/ Durham with their 4 x A star profile (delete as appropriate). Graduate under/unemployment is a sad fact these days.

My ds went to lse for economics and then did a masters in economics at Leeds. Didn't magically get a job even after the masters. We stupidly thought name and prestige and having a master's magically meant you'd get a better paying job.

Is Charlie Aslet - Clive Aslet’s son?

Not silly. If it’s an essential criteria you need to ensure your application confirms you meet all essential.
We can’t assume.
I’ve done a recent sift of law graduate CVs and not all had a pass grade in maths gcse. You can’t assume a uni requires it, my dc’s high ranking uni just required an English gcse grade 7 no maths stipulation. There was an applicant with a law degree with a 4 in GCSE English language which I was shocked at but some unis have very low entry standards.
I’m on a couple of mins per application if that due to volume received - checklist of essential and desirable they are scored against. All done by me/colleague no HR sift or AI.
We don’t recruit blind but Oxford doesn’t get more points than a low ranking uni.