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‘So Many Students, So Few Jobs’: Understanding Graduate Career Aspirations and Employability in Precarious Times Professor Henrietta O’Connor University of Leicester

So many students, so few jobs: Understanding graduate career aspirations and employability in precarious times - Henrietta O'Connor

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Presentation at the HEA-funded workshop 'Rendering explicit the implicit: Promoting and balancing effective learning and employability within the undergraduate curriculum'. The workshop aimed to act as a conduit for the dissemination of relevant research, good practice and innovation in (1) sociology students’ understandings of their employability and the implications for higher education policy and practice (2) how to balance both effective learning and employability within the undergraduate sociology curriculum. This presentation is part of a related blog post that provides an overview of the event: http://bit.ly/1gepkbc For further details of the HEA's work on employability and global citizenship in the Social Sciences, please see: http://bit.ly/17n8Knj

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Page 1: So many students, so few jobs: Understanding graduate career aspirations and employability in precarious times - Henrietta  O'Connor

‘So Many Students, So Few Jobs’: Understanding Graduate Career Aspirations

and Employability in Precarious Times

Professor Henrietta O’ConnorUniversity of Leicester

Page 2: So many students, so few jobs: Understanding graduate career aspirations and employability in precarious times - Henrietta  O'Connor

‘So many students, so few jobs’

• Student aspirations and employability in precarious times

• The study• Enhancing employability: perceptions of

internships • Conclusions

Page 3: So many students, so few jobs: Understanding graduate career aspirations and employability in precarious times - Henrietta  O'Connor

Graduate Labour Market in Precarious Times

• Changing nature of the GLM is well-recognised• Transformed since Brown and Scase (1994)

study found graduates anticipating a single step post-HE transition into a graduate ‘job for life’

• ‘the decline of the established graduate career trajectory’ (Tomlinson, 2012: 411)

• Mirrors changing transitions for school leavers in earlier times of precarity

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Employability in Precarious Times

• ‘Rupture’ of the relationship between HEIs and labour market has changed role of HEIs

• Increasing pressure to develop employability skills and to embed these in the curriculum

• Corresponding emphasis on individuals to enhance their own CVs, to take responsibility and to develop their own employability ‘relative to others within a hierarchy of job seekers’ (Brown and Hesketh, 2004:25)

Page 5: So many students, so few jobs: Understanding graduate career aspirations and employability in precarious times - Henrietta  O'Connor

Graduate Perceptions in Precarious Times

• Recognition of need to differentiate in order to succeed (but not equal opportunity to do so):

To begin with I was confident as I truly believed if you wanted something and worked hard enough for it you would get it. As my time in university progressed, I began to see the reality of the situation and my confidence dwindled. So many students, so little jobs, so many people with good degrees, so difficult to secure any kind of work experience even voluntary.

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Too little, too late?

• Willis (1977:107) suggests ‘…ironically as the shop floor becomes a prison, education is seen retrospectively and hopelessly as the only escape’.

‘As I came towards the end of my degree, I began to see the jobs market dry up and started to lower my expectations and at the end of my degree I saw that having a degree was not enough at all’

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The Project• Set up by the Careers Service• Aimed to understand student aspirations students in

context of internship programme • Low uptake for 2011/12 graduate internship

programme (85/148)• High percentage of WP students was a concern given

concerns over lack of engagement• Only Times Top 20 HEI to meet all benchmarks for

Widening Participation - 89% state school entrants (Nottingham 72%, Leeds, 73%, Sheffield 83%)

• But ‘moderate’ WP

Page 8: So many students, so few jobs: Understanding graduate career aspirations and employability in precarious times - Henrietta  O'Connor

Internships• Part of employability initiatives used by HEIs

to help students enhance CVs and gain ‘positional edge’

• There is widespread conviction that ‘high quality’ work experience placements are invaluable and ‘there seems almost universal acceptance of the value of work placements and internships’ (HEFCE, 2011:2).

• Focus on under-supply, competitive nature of internships BUT

Page 9: So many students, so few jobs: Understanding graduate career aspirations and employability in precarious times - Henrietta  O'Connor

Internships as Exploitation

• Evidence that some schemes are under-subscribed and HEIs have difficulty filling places in less fashionable sectors and/or industries without tradition

• Focus on bad practice internships (internaware.org, graduatefog.co.uk, @ukces #notjustmakingtea)

• ‘the term internship is used by employers, graduates and the media to refer to a range of unpaid, poorly-supervised and low skills activities’ (Guile and Lahiff, 2013:3).

Page 10: So many students, so few jobs: Understanding graduate career aspirations and employability in precarious times - Henrietta  O'Connor

• Neglected in the literature: – ‘our knowledge of internships is scanty and unsystematic’

(Leonard, 2013) – ‘Internship has been attracting considerable attention for

a number of years and, yet, had rarely been the subject of any sustained, serious research’ (Guile and Lahiff, 2013:1).

• Yet proliferation of internship opportunities (and media attention)

• Data show impact of:– ‘Demonisation’ of internships (Guile, 2013)– ‘Normalisation’ of unpaid internships (Allen et al., 2013)– Lack of understanding/confused definitions– Link to vocational education

Page 11: So many students, so few jobs: Understanding graduate career aspirations and employability in precarious times - Henrietta  O'Connor

Internships

• Initial focus was on internships• Discovered that graduates most likely to apply for an

internship were high achieving academically and were already ‘engagers’

• Positive about the experience and had very full CVs• ‘Disengagers’ were dismissive of such opportunities• Focused on ‘demonisation’ of internships (Guile,

2009), believed all internships to be unpaid/exploitative/waste of time or had little understanding of the term

Page 12: So many students, so few jobs: Understanding graduate career aspirations and employability in precarious times - Henrietta  O'Connor

Engagers• Had entered with higher tariff points than the home departmental

average• Graduated with a first or 2:1• Engaged in a wide range of ECAs including internships• Life planners (Brooks and Everett, 2008) or Players (Brown and

Hesketh, 2004)

I was involved in a number of societies and held committee positions in one of the largest sports clubs. I also had a part-time job working at the University. I felt that getting a good degree from a top University, combined with work experience, a part time job and a commitment to a number of sports clubs would appeal to a number of employers.

Page 13: So many students, so few jobs: Understanding graduate career aspirations and employability in precarious times - Henrietta  O'Connor

Engagers: understanding opportunties?

• A PAID (respondent emphasis) opportunity of at least 6 weeks (usually) within a firm, typically undertaking similar work to that which would be taken on by a graduate. Often a good opportunity for employers to entice prospective employees and to get a better idea than they would in an interview of how suitable the student is. I wouldn't count unpaid work experience or work experience that didn't really reflect the nature of the job as "internships".

• To spend 4-12 weeks in the working world to find out if that is the sort of job you could see yourself doing long term. It is an opportunity to interact with colleagues on a day-to-day basis to gain real insight as to what working for that said 'company' may be like as a graduate.

Page 14: So many students, so few jobs: Understanding graduate career aspirations and employability in precarious times - Henrietta  O'Connor

Internship as positional advantage• The notion of seeking out opportunities in order to stand apart from

other graduates was significant: A career stage after graduation that provides valuable experience and training that will provide people with an advantage over other graduates when looking for full-time, permanent employment.

• Skill development (skills that other job seekers will lack):

Slave labour? No. An opportunity to work within an organisation, supervised in realistic tasks in order to gain practical, transferable, tangible experience. Very useful in distinguishing yourself from other graduates. [the institution] could have encouraged these more i.e. during study

Page 15: So many students, so few jobs: Understanding graduate career aspirations and employability in precarious times - Henrietta  O'Connor

Good Practice Internships

• Structured internships can play an important role ‘as a means of developing skills to benefit both individuals and employers’ (Guile, 2013:1).

• Such schemes are underpinned with the aim of continuing ‘the tradition of developing expertise (knowledge, skill and judgement and identity)’.

Page 16: So many students, so few jobs: Understanding graduate career aspirations and employability in precarious times - Henrietta  O'Connor

Disengagers

• Project gave views of those who did not pursue an internship

• Overall tended to be far less engaged with careers service and ECAs

• Great deal of emphasis here on exploitative internships, lack of link between degree subject and internships available, lack of understanding of term and of benefits

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What is an internship?• There is confusion over what the term means – interchangeable with work

placement/work experience/apprenticeship/shadowing/paid and unpaid/undergraduate and graduate. This confusion seems to be transmitted to graduates:

I don't know the difference between an internship and an apprenticeship

I don't like the term internship. I consider it an Americanism. But I guess it means apprenticeship. Internship is a confusing word and I didn’t really

understand the email.

I was VAGUELY aware whilst at the university that internships or similar were available through the careers service but had no idea really what these involved or, more to the point, how I could get involved.

Page 18: So many students, so few jobs: Understanding graduate career aspirations and employability in precarious times - Henrietta  O'Connor

‘Demonisation’ of Internships

• Language used to describe internships is emotive and negative and possibly informed by high profile media stories?:

The original concept: A company willingly takes on a student in order to help them develop their abilities and shape their future career path with the benefit of first-hand experience.

The modern concept: Free/below minimum wage work from desperate students. Hope you know how to make good coffee champ.

Page 19: So many students, so few jobs: Understanding graduate career aspirations and employability in precarious times - Henrietta  O'Connor

Benefits to employers, not internsSlavery in disguise/ work experience/ professional hot drinks maker. This is a question that cannot give a sufficient answer for because I did not concern myself with looking for internships during my degree.

Tea and biscuit delivery coordinator. i.e. a massive waste of time.

An underpaid apprenticeship you must undertake, even after you have a qualification!

An apprenticeship for grown-ups. A good excuse for an employer to pay below market wages…I get so many offers from agencies in my inbox, why bother with an internship?

Page 20: So many students, so few jobs: Understanding graduate career aspirations and employability in precarious times - Henrietta  O'Connor

YTS for Precarious Graduates?

‘The main complaint was that the training allowance was derisory. Trainees who were firm-based often complained of being exploited, especially when their training involved doing jobs for which other workers were paid wages’ (Roberts, 1995: 70).

Page 21: So many students, so few jobs: Understanding graduate career aspirations and employability in precarious times - Henrietta  O'Connor

• Allen et al. (2013:442) have argued of students in the creative industries ‘the normalisation of unpaid placements led working-class students to self-select how many and what kinds of placements they undertook on the basis of their financial situation’.

• Further impact is that negative attitudes/misunderstandings are leading students to self-select not to pursue an internship believing such roles to be exploitative, unpaid and valueless.

• How real is this perception?

Page 22: So many students, so few jobs: Understanding graduate career aspirations and employability in precarious times - Henrietta  O'Connor

Echoes of YTS?‘It was inevitable that young people would see the scheme primarily as an alternative to unemployment and that employers would view trainees as young people who had been unable to obtain employment’ (Roberts, 1995:70).

• Over 2/3 of applicants had been unemployed or in temporary employment since graduation or had not secured long-term roles (HEFCE figures).

• There is little motivation for graduates to take up an internship after graduation unless they do not have an alternative destination, either continuing in higher education, entering employment or taking time out.

• Danger that all internships become seen as ‘warehousing’?

Page 23: So many students, so few jobs: Understanding graduate career aspirations and employability in precarious times - Henrietta  O'Connor

Vocational Routes?• Some graduates view internships as vocational/apprenticeship

roles that are low paid and benefit the employer, not the individual.

• Perceived therefore as lower status vocational pathways, undermining the investment in a degree which ‘should’ entitle holder to progress to a graduate job, e.g. ‘not relevant to my degree’:

Anecdotally, I think the very phrase "internships" can have negative connotations to students. Students like to feel their degree has gained them skills which others do not have. Internship seems to imply a sense of being a "newbie".

Page 24: So many students, so few jobs: Understanding graduate career aspirations and employability in precarious times - Henrietta  O'Connor

Vocational v. Academic Pathway

‘A marked feature of working class learners’ educational identities has been the propensity to engage in forms of learning that have more immediate economic relevance while discarding those that are likely to have minimal bearing on their anticipated working lives. By contrast, the routes to ‘professional’ employment are largely characterised by more abstract knowledge that is rich in symbolic meaning and strongly associated with traditional ‘academic’ curricular …while not necessarily being ‘trained’ they are nonetheless being groomed for types of skills and learning contexts that facilitate access to higher-level occupational pursuits’.

(Tomlinson, 2013:98)

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Conclusion

• Danger of demonisation of internships is that they become even more ‘of a key mechanism for middle class kids to get middle class jobs, potentially also reproducing divisions of ethnicity, gender and place’ (Leonard, 2013).

• Those who may gain from experience increasingly less likely to seek out the opportunities serving to reinforce existing social mobility issues, e.g. both low status and unobtainable

• Existing difficulties of accessing (unpaid) internships will be compounded by misunderstanding of more positive opportunities

• Imperative for HEIs to ensure that opportunities are open, accessible and understood by all students.

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Sociologists as Interns• An internship is a, either paid or non-paid, job where you get to shadow

other people in that field, carry out projects and work alongside long-term employees in order to gain the level of experience needed for future, more long-term employment. I found that there weren't any internships within the sociology department, an active research department. I personally would have loved to shadow, or been a research assistant to a lecturer carrying out some research. No experience like that was offered.

• I simply feel that more could be done about students who want to carry on working within their chosen subject area. In my experience the careers department are helpful and friendly but my own department do not offer any help in the area of 'what happens next' the only thing mentioned to me during my masters is the option of a non-funded PhD which I cannot afford to do. They are the most equipped to help with such matters, in research, and therefore I believe they should offer some guidance or help.