"Look after the pennies and the pounds look after themselves." - Anon

The word graduation alone is enough to turn even the most prepared and organized student into a blind panic. Now we are facing a far more complicated and bigger challenge. With the current dismal economic climate and Gordon Brown doing all that he can to battle the rising unemployment rates, what are the options for those of us beginning our desperate search for employment and the dream job? Many of us are left feeling hopeless, with bleak prospects as we graduate smack bang in the middle of the biggest recession, with headlines like: ‘Britain set for deeper recession than early 1990s’ splashed across papers everywhere.

We came to university with great hopes of furthering our education and bettering our chances of achieving the career we desired. We also had the benefit of being at the height of an economic boom in Britain, with copious jobs available and employees receiving endless bonuses and benefits. The transition from university to the real world and working life had never been easier! Now the country and our situation could not be more different and daunting. Research has shown that the effects of the recession will be damaging to our incomes for several years, with starting salaries in London falling by 5% and 14% in East Anglia.

There are far fewer openings in popular jobs, like banking and accounting with many more being made redundant than employed. Most of us will be left with the depressing prospect of applying for jobs with a much higher number of applicants than places. So what is the key to success? Perhaps the answer is to continue in further education, as now has never been a better time to do it and a good excuse to spend more time living life as a student! Or maybe we will have to accept that we might have to apply to jobs outside our chosen field and be more flexible in the areas we are prepared to work and relocate to.

There is no doubt that our generation has a lot going for it and this too can be used to our advantage. Our ‘information age’ literacy means we embrace the internet with a passion and are more than familiar with banking and shopping online, making us adept in the current work environment. Undoubtedly, the most important thing is to market yourself effectively so you can stand out from the crowd, by gaining extra work experience or participating in extra university activities. High achieving students will always be snapped up but others might need to work a little harder to be noticed. On the plus side some employees are actively seeking graduates, they can no longer afford their highly paid staff but need people who they can pay less as a substitute.
It is definitely not all doom and gloom for us students; we just need to be more alert to opportunities that come our way and take whatever we can get! Flexibility and dedication is clearly the key.

In recent years we have seen a new conceptualisation of what being a student is. Numbers have increased dramatically, as an objective of Labour’s aims to draw in half of school leavers into university. Almost blinded by notions of a more educated population, nobody so much as batters an eyelid at the prospect of a toxic effect of too many, and instead, focus on the monetary “value” by turning university education into a social ‘right’.

University education has almost lost grips on the old, somewhat romantic purposes of individual emancipation, of scholarship and academic merit, and has found itself in the cold, mechanical grips of a financially-driven employment machine. This change is partly natural of course, with an ever growing population comes increased demand and competition; employers begin asking for higher qualifications to differentiate – an arguable lapse of logic, subject to an effect of diminishing returns; as more and more students present degrees in job application, it eventually transpires as another arbitrary layer of education, which is what a-levels are increasingly becoming. Thus, a degree is almost a requirement for many post-18, and the current, pervasive viewpoint that a degree is now a means to an end, and for most, nothing more is substantiating itself thoroughly.  A system slowly being drained of virtue.

The NUS may proclaim, somewhat blindly I feel, a charismatic and passionate attitude towards the notion that an ‘education is a right’ and quite honestly, I do agree. What I do not agree with is that this right belongs at university level education. Examine this from the point of view of research and development – the principal goals of a University: What higher attainment or academic merit is to be gained by educational institutions, if the ideological purpose of university is to give students their “right” for a further education? This models university into an economical graduate producer.

It is the responsibility of education authorities to keep standards high, and while herding sheep numbers of students through their doors may provide financial suit,  it ignores the detrimental side effects of changing the purpose, and dare I say it, virtues of university education. 

Slowly the very fabric is being eaten at with a distasteful monetary policy, and we ignore this effect by suggesting greater financial liberation by virtue of a greater number.