Life After Graduation
by Debbie Hill

Debbie Hill, a student on the Professional Writing course at Falmouth College has written a piece on life after graduation for the college's bloc webzine. This, and more examples of writing by Falmouth students can be found at www.falmouth.ac.uk/bloc

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It's so true that these days you not only have to have a degree, but several masters and post graduate diplomas plus several years work experience in a related field before an employer will even look at your CV, never mind entertain the idea of wasting half an hour of his precious time to interview you.

It's a sad fact that twenty somethings are now competing in a cut throat, web savvy world, so different to the one students of our parents' generation graduated into. Then, the number of graduates was much lower and afterwards the majority were herded safely into companies who usually took on 80-100 graduates, knowing that whilst the majority would move elsewhere, they would be left with a core of about twenty to bolster their work force.

Then it was a career for life. Sort out the pension and prepare for thirty to forty years working your way up the ladder. Not so today. Graduates who gain employment straight after university rarely stay in their first job for more than a couple of years. This is largely because starting salaries for graduates can in many cases be as low as for people with little or few qualifications and it is this fact which I believe has caused mass dissillusion with the university education system.

Such as myself and many of my friends didn't realise whilst mulling over subject choices in UCAS brochures, that traditional subjects are not usually the best option, especially if you are labouring under the illusion that you will be employable directly after your degree. In my university town of Leicester there was a certain snobbery connected to the university you attended. At one end there was the University of Leicester - home of traditional subjects, law students and medics and where I studied a BA(Hons) in English. At the other end was the highly frowned upon, newly converted De Montfort University - READ EX POLYTECHNIC - and I am ashamed to admit that in my naivety I joined in the poly-bashing and snide, smug comments about PROPER universities that were bandied round the Leicester University bars with much glee.

A few years later and I am eating home-baked humble pie. From friends of mine from Leicester, I can only glean that De Montfort runs practical, vocational courses teaching valid skills. Its students emerge into the design-hungry, technical world equipped to deal with interviews and armed with the indispensable knowledge that they have what employers want. English graduates from Leicester can boast only that they spent three years dissecting books and preparing essays on subjects of interest only to students and academics. Most of my fellow English graduates are still in further education, running up further debts or attempting desperately to learn the computer skills that are needed to cope in today’s work place.

I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy my degree. Quite the contrary. It's just that I enjoyed it more for the chance to meet new people and live in that environment for three years, rather than for the piece of paper at the end of the course. English apparently gives you the communication skills to obtain a wide variety of jobs. Unfortunately this wide scope is all too wide

Debbie Hill © May 2000

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©Northcliffe Newspapers 2000
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