...back in the real world, I've held two positions involving recruitment - one in training & recruitment for a couple of large call centres, and another as a recruitment consultant, ranging from entry level to senior executive.

In both jobs I met, spoke to and interviewed many, many dozens of graduates and can tell you very many of them see such jobs as below them. We would offer these highly educated people a position in the knowledge they would probably be actively seeking something else, and they would turn their nose up. A permanent job with a low but acceptable wage - certainly something to live on while hunting for their career entry.

Some graduates - not all of course, and I've met and placed the hard workers too - can be extremely snobbish about their choice of work. It's understandable - they've worked for 3 years and built up a load of debt to obtain a qualification that's supposed to help them on the career ladder, and they're being offered the same role and wage as those who left school or college with few qualifications at all. Who wouldn't hold out until they 'find something better'?

I don't doubt you at all, my eldest found something similar when she left Uni with a law degree, because we gave our two kids no other option than to have to work for their money (we don't subsidise them at all other than provide me as a free taxi driver), she was writing for jobs in the legal profession before she even left Uni, she quickly realised that two years ago nobody in that profession was taking on new starters and so she lowered her sights and has been working these last two years in a legal services based position in what other "traditional" law firms would look down their noses at in a "call centre" sort of way - meanwhile she knows of at least two other fellow graduates who are still hanging on, probably being supported by gullible parents, in the hope that they will get a position as a trainee solicitor with all fees paid, with their two year old degree and no experience.

Realistic viewpoints and the young often do not mix very well.

I think it's partly down to universities and 6th forms pushing degrees in such a way that makes it appear like "do a degree here and you'll end up in a fantastic job" plus parents who often grew up in a time when people with degrees did get good jobs on the whole after leaving Uni.

... and, I think, an element of employers, in a flooded jobs market, deciding that jobs that, previously, might not have required applicants to be a graduate, deciding to insist upon that.

I mentioned it before, but the growth in tertiary education is a plank of the neo-liberal approach, as highlighted in Ha-Joon Chang's [i23 Things[/i. Switzerland, for instance, had had a low level of tertiary education, but obviously a rather successful economy. And even there, in recent years, the whole tertiary education thing has been being pushed. Still, I suppose it creates jobs in service economies ...

Hmm ... I wonder how much this is pushing university applications back up, despite the initial decline due to increased fees?

The thing is that there is no 'argument' to be had with the likes of you, as countless posts prove. You're not worth engaging with at any level above disdain and contempt.

Oh that's almost certainly a major factor in why people take degrees. My own job doesn't require degree level knowledge, but there's no way I'd have got the job without one.

Which she appears to be doing and what the court case highlighted was that these compulsory work placements are nothing more than inappropriate cheap labour.

We took on a couple of graduates last year, both mature students. I interviewed both. One had worked for the local council in a low paid job before getting his degree. The other had worked as a taxi diver while doing the same.

The idea that the fact they did that had any baring on them being employed here (an IT company) is nuts yet that seems to be the governments main justification for forcing people onto these schemes. "It will show you are employable and can get out of bed regularly ready for work" seems to be the line they take. This is absolutely crazy. If they actually think someone having been placed on a compulsory work placement scheme for Poundland would get them any further down the line for a job here they are totally out of touch with reality.

Everybody knows it's compulsory so since when was compulsion any indicator of a willingness to work?

The fact our two graduates had jobs before was to be expected given they were mature students but if they had been unemployed for several years yet went and got educated that would count for far more in my eyes than an entry on their CV which amounts to forced labour stacking shelves.

I'm betting that you could tell from the way they interviewed whether they really wanted to work or not.

These smoking, drunk, drug taking, sky watching, iphone pounding, on line, up at 3pm, bad backed, depressed baby making machine scumbags should be put in workhouses and fed in a soup kitchen. Anything else is a luxury we cannot afford.

The unemployed should have night-time curfew and restricted access to non-unemployed residential/recreational areas would be prudent, I do not want to find the unemployed going through my bins, robbing my home, or molesting my dog in the park.

Those in position should be allowed to take on, or ‘foster’ if you like, the longer term unemployed, the government sub-contracting their needs out to the privet sector. A place to sleep – a loft or out-building, food and water - leftovers from last night’s dinner party and an outside tap, and the all important work training/experience - cooking, cleaning, child care, estate/grounds/house maintenance, caddying, even further sub-contracting out to a farm or a factory for more training (all would help someone with the skills needed to get back into work).

And when back in work they can start to pay back their board and loggings to the state and/or their ‘fosterer’ along with the training cost, expenses, appropriate administration fees, etc.

Yes and we didn't just interview the two who got the jobs which might sound like stating the obvious but the decisions were made on their qualifications and other factors. One of them had done a small IT project as part of a work placement in his degree and that was discussed at length. Had he done two weeks in Poundland it wouldn't have been.

When I did my degree many moons ago I did a year in industry which was unusual from a traditional Uni (as opposed to a Poly) back then but it was the best thing I ever did. I am convinced I got a better degree as a result and while the employment marketplace was better then I was offered four different jobs and I am sure the year in industry counted toward that. I also appreciated my last year at Uni all the more having seen the real world of work!

So relevant experience is a very good thing in my book. Being compelled to stack shelves will tell a prospective employer absolutely nothing about how their prospective employee will pan out for them.

I would argue that is not a bad thing. Some of us older folks long for an unrealistic expectation every now and then.

Ah, to hedge their bets, yes?

LOL Oooops I'm dyslexic

Easy, instead of making it compulsary make it easier to volunteer to do unpaid work in the field you are trained/educated in.

That way the law students can work unpaid for an agreed period of time getting experience and showing willing by not making it compulsary whilst the unqualified will have to do less qualified job roles if they choose to do so as a way of showing willing.

Don't threaten job seekers with benefit cuts, threaten the idle instead.

In principle thats not a bad idea, in practice it does raise the prospect that suddenly every employer in the land will have access to this huge wealth of free labour.

In principle access to free labour is not a bad idea for most cash strapped businesses who other wise would not be recruiting right now, but it does raise the prospect that these might not turn out to be newly created work experience jobs, but real jobs that were formally filled by people who were employed but are now unemployed because the company got rid of them to fill the vacancy with free labour.

Yes, it would be illegal to do so, but do you trust a cash strapped business enough to assume that no-one would try it on ?

Would you have the fictional character Yosser Hughes working in a Museum?

Cait Reilly volunteered in a museum because she saw that this volunteering was the first rung of the ladder when it comes to getting the career that she wanted. The Work Programme is all about matching clients to suitable posts and unfortunately in reality this hasn't been the case - It's been about creating profits for multinational commercial companies.

One thing that very rarely gets discussed is why people on benefits are idle.

Personally I think most idleness on benefits comes from the exhaustion of rejection.

There's no indication of the level at which she worked but how would being forced to stack shelves and wash floors at Poundland improve her CV better than voluntarily working in a museum, in whatever capacity?
Given that she wants to eventually land a job in a museum, you could look at her voluntary work in a museum as a sort of minor-internship.
It would certainly look better on her CV for that kind of job than washing Poundland's floor would.

More to the point, how exactly did Poundland get in to this scheme?

I could understand it if they were genuinely offering some sort of "work experience" coupled with genuine supervision and training, for people that a reasonable assessment had been made might benefit and increase their chances of a fulltime job, if this is on the basis that Poundland both has no actual vacancies, AND that there is a significant cost implication for Poundland if they participate.

ANY other type of job, then at least minimum wage should apply.

I know nothing of Poundland's involvement, but clearly in this lady the posting was asinine, to put it at its best; given what she was already doing, and given the direction she wanted to take, there does not seem to have been anything, at all, to be gained by this forced labour. Unless her labour was in fact of cash benefit to Poundland if she did work which otherwise normally paid staff would have had to do.

Good post.

I don't disagree regarding the work programme, where I do disagree is your notion that you need a degree to work in a museum - that is simply not true.

No one is being asked to work for nothing - those on the work programme are still drawing JSA

This tells us absolutely nothing because you lumped people doing PhD's with people who are unemployed. I couldn't find the survey you mentioned, but in other years more than 3/4s of those not in full time work are in further education.

That is simply not true, either you or the person who told you the 'fact' misunderstood the data. The fact that you re-regurgitated it without realising that it is clearly no-where near the truth shows that you don't really know what you're talking about.

My cousin is a zoologist at the Natural History Museum in London. He has a doctorate in zoology which is the requirement to being a zoologist at the museum. It also qualifies him to be an expert on such programmes such as Inside Natures Giants. Without his Cambridge degree and Doctorate he couldn't work at the museum in his chosen field.