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Jobs market bleak for grads as banking weakens

Graduates being spat out by the UK's sprawling Higher Education sector this year will face the first fall in the number of grad job vacancies since 2003. There has been a 5.4 per cent fall in jobs for graduates since last year. Graduates who do find jobs will find starting salaries have not increased from last year's average of …

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Anonymous Coward
Joke

"A quarter of all graduate jobs are accountancy posts"

Why the need for so many years of education when a couple of weeks tuition in using Excel would do the job??

Mark

No surprise

Given the grade inflation/difficulty deflation of the modern exams - sorry grads but it's just as true as my early days of GCSEs not being a patch on the previous O-levels, get over it - it's hardly surprising that the number struggling to find jobs will increase.

This country has embarked on a course of action over the last 2 decades whereby people can't be seen to fail and everyone must get a degree as it makes the country look better.

Here's news, it bloody doesn't. India and the like must be laughing their collective arses off at our continual output of social science, media studies and sub-standard science grads. It's about time UK plc hardened up the exam process to produce fewer but higher quality graduates that will be in genuine demand and made available or educated the rest as to the availability of good practical skills courses. I guess diploma/HND type stuff along with trades education.

If you're shit-thick when it comes to maths it doesn't mean you can't be a good plumber, sparky, bricklayer etc, and if you work hard there's good money to be made with your own business. I can't see any problems giving them grants for approved courses if they don't already.

Truth is the concept of a degree for all has to stop - if everyone has them then they're not worth much. A bit like a BMW 3-series compared to back in the early 80's.

Hear endeth the sermon.

Lionel Baden

WTF Seriously !!!

I have been called at least 13 times in the past 3 weeks for jobs, Lst time my CV was updated was 5 months Ago !!!!

I don't have any degrees, etc etc just experience

Glad i bummed around the world for 10 years instead of going to uni

Eddie
Thumb Up

Careful with that Blanket UK statement

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7882989.stm

Graduate opportunities are rising in Scotland....

andy
Go

nowhere near as bad as the media are making out

I was made redundant from a decent programming position recently. I had about 8 calls from Monster after they found my CV and within 3 weeks had a new, excellent job (better than my last). From what I've seen, if you're prepared to look around and adapt your skills you can get on quite easily.

@Lionel: Although I did go to uni, I totally agree with you that things are NO WAY near as bad as some people (i.e. the media) are making out.

Anonymous Coward
Thumb Up

@No surprise

You are bang on. It's the same here in Canada and could you blame the Indians, Chinese, Russians, Eastern Europeans, Central and South Americans from laughing at us.

Little wonder your once great corporations are outsourcing, although that's going to bite them in their asses sooner than later I think.

boltar

Most people go straight to work anyway

Its only Trustafarians hippies who can doss about for a year doing nothing useful in some dump in Tibet "discovering themselves" (or whatever euphamism for drug taking is used these days) backrolled by mummy and daddy. Those of us who lived in the real world had to get a job before the ink on our degree certificates was even dry.

jake

Are you sure?

"Serious dose of fries-with-that-itis"

Actually, even the mega-sized fast-so-called-food outfits are downsizing ... Which from this foodie's perspective is probably the only high point of the global recession ...

Matt Bryant
Flame

Expectations?

I regularly see job applicants where degree newly-grads - wetter behind the ears than the average whelk - expect to walk into £35k+ positions with a BMW 3-series company car, no need to work beyond the 9-5 and with some kind of guaranteed progression that will magically waft them to senior management in five years if they just play golf and smile a lot. Those that actually make it through the interviews get a nasty shock when they realise they really are at the bottom of the ladder, their degree actually counts for SFA compared to some guy who left school early but worked his way up from PFY apprentice/tea-maker, and they have got to work waaaaaay beyond 9-5 just to stand still. I learnt more in my first six months employment than I did in my whole degree, and it opened my eyes to find that the majority of the best people in the business didn't even go to college. The current Government's fascination with quotas is just stupid, it is erasing quality for the sake of quantity.

/rant off.

Richard Baxter

Starting salary?

I don't believe the true average starting salary, for all UK university graduates, is anywhere near £25,000.

This figure is just for the blue-chip, milk-round companies represented by the AGR, which pay high salaries but only employ about 5% of graduates - generally those who went to top universities, have extroverted personalities, and have names like Rupert.

Anonymous Coward
Joke

monster

> I had about 8 calls from Monster

Proposing to deposit 10million of your dollars in my bank account.

> after they found my CV

Stolen from their database and for sale on the black market...

Andre

Give me $5 and RUN MY LIFE

Been in IT for 10 years and I am at the point where I ask myself .... is this it?

My mind thinks ... where are all the years going ..... as I look back ..... If I was 21 again I would do this or when I was 15 I should have nail that cunt for bitching on me!! - so many things I would have liked to have done.

So I came up with this. From now until June 1st 2009 I am going to try and raise 100,000 USD, and as from that date I let people tell me what to do, by means of voting on tasks.

So you could tell me to:

Do a bungee jump in Queenstown in New Zealand?

Help out a run down porn queen in a trailer park in Las Vegas

Give 5000 to a small start up in Finland

Bang 4 fine e Euro Gumball race

Buy an ochicks in Prague

Drive in thld oil rig and help Pirate bay

The choice of what I am todo is entirely up to the voters each Sunday night after June 1st until the cash runs out.

So if you like my simple idea and trust me with your pennies then why not give a dollar or two for the cause http://www.paulkinsella.com - you also get a backlink and tag [size depends on how much you give]

give a comment or two on the site if you have the time so I can get the feelings for the logic..

jake

Sign of the times ...

With a lead like "Jobs market bleak for grads as banking weakens", nobody reading ElReg has come up with the obvious Spoonerism?

Methinks that folks have run out of time/money for humo(u)r ... Self included. Alas.

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