There’s a worrying report in The Guardian today for anyone who is about to graduate from university. According to new research up to 1 in 10 graduates will be unemployed six months after graduating and many more will be underemployed – when students with degrees work in low-skilled jobs.
Added to this is the fact that graduates are facing the highest ever levels of debt. This comes as a result of universities introducing top-up fees where students had to pay £3,000 per year. With all this it’s perhaps unsurprising that the vast majority of students (60% in England) choose not to go to university.
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There’s no escaping the recession and lately there’s been a lot of talk on universities, how they will be affected by the recession and more importantly; are degrees recession proof?
Recently I was asked to keynote at a careers conference at the University of West of England (I’d like to thank UWE for being forward-thinking and inviting me – I promised I wouldn’t be a trojan horse!), specifically on the question of how the university will cope with the recession and whether degrees are recession proof. What came out of the conference, after talks from economists, universities & Gov’t is that no-one really knows.
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There has been a rise in the drop-out rate at UK universities, figures show.
Annual performance indicators from the Higher Education Statistics Agency show 7.4% of young undergraduates left after a year in 2007 against 7.1% in 2006.
State school pupils made up 88% of young undergraduates, up from 87.8%, and 9.7% were from low participation neighbourhoods, up from 9%.
The government is asking for funding council advice about the wide variations between institutions.
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