University challenge

Telecoms firm BT has closed its doors to university leavers by withdrawing its graduate recruitment scheme. This is significant news. If Britain’s ninth largest employer is barring entry to university graduates it is clear that the outlook for the thousands of young people finishing university this summer is far from rosy.

Tony Blair envisaged a Britain where one in two young people didn’t complete their education until they had a degree under their belt and recently Gordon Brown has come under fire for letting this ideal slide. Some commentators believe that the Government should magic up extra funding to pay for an increase in the number of sought-after university places. But is encouraging more young people to study increasingly worthless degrees and accumulate vast piles of debt really a sensible way forward? It might keep them out of the job market (and away from the unemployment statistics) for a few years but it’s debatable whether the investment will reap the rewards that a tertiary education used to bestow not so long ago.

The government recently launched a Backing Young Britain campaign in an attempt to avert the crisis of youth unemployment. It targets not just the growing number of unemployed graduates but all young jobseekers – whose numbers now reach 928,000, nearly one in five of all 16 to 24 year olds, according to the latest figures.  This campaign urges businesses to provide work experience, voluntary places, internships or work trials. But news concerning a forerunner to this campaign doesn’t augur well. In a scheme which sought to give work trials to the unemployed, only one in every 10,000 jobseekers allowance claimants actually participated in the scheme due in no small part to disinterest on the part of employers.

But even if a majority of firms get involved in these types of schemes there’s no guarantee of permanent paid employment when placements end – leaving the Government open to criticism that this campaign simply encourages employers to exploit young people by getting them to work for little or no pay with scant prospect of a proper job offered in return.

The focus in these debates too often examines the supply side but it’s no use upskilling young people – graduates or otherwise - if there are no jobs for them to take when they complete their college or work placements. Concentrating investment first and foremost on bolstering the UK’s beleagured manufacturing industry and nascent digital industries might make more sense.