This article was originally posted on the Career Coach blog. In it Emma Le Blanc looks at the reasons why there is inequality in graduate outcomes in the UK and suggests a range of ways in which effective careers programmes can contribute to improving these outcomes.

Introduction

London Southbank University (LSBU) was founded in 1892 and was known as Borough Polytechnic based in South London. It gained the status of university in 1992. LSBU’s founder was a philanthropist called Edric Bayley who was a local solicitor. He was prompted to create Borough Polytechnic because of his social conscience as he:

“wanted to establish a technical college in Elephant & Castle to help tackle the extreme poverty that there was in the area at the time. The curriculum was based around the industries local to Southwark, with the intention that people could enhance their employment prospects through training in relevant skills and technologies (JISC Archives Hub, ND).

What does my role entail?

I am currently working as an Employability Consultant with LSBU with a focus on promoting positive graduate outcomes for unemployed and underemployed Class of 2020 graduates and final year 2021 students. Many of the graduates and final year students that I work with are the first generation in their family to go to university. They predominantly derive from working-class and or BAME backgrounds and around half of them are mature students.

Also, my role involves me calling graduates and finding out about whether they have a positive graduate outcome (i.e. graduate employment, postgraduate study, or self-employment) and if they do not, I ask them if they would like 1:1 support and invite them to employability workshops. I also monitor and report graduate outcomes on a fortnightly basis to my line manager.

My role involves me designing and delivering bespoke workshops which help graduates to:

• Explore their options.
• Think about their next steps.
• And equip them with tools they need to succeed in the labour market.

My role also entails 1:1 career interviews where I support graduates and final year students to:

• Develop career management skills.
• Understand their options.
• Learn about career planning.
• Help them to identify and think about the skills (sector specific, hard, soft, and transferable) they have and assist them to articulate them, write about them and showcase them.
• Help them to identify their strengths, areas for development and any barriers that they countenance.
• Coach them to have more confidence and self-belief.
• Support them to think about marketing themselves online and offline.
• Assist them to think about the economic environment they are in due to Covid-19 and encourage them to adopt a growth mindset, be more flexible, adaptable, and resilient to uncertainty and complexity in the labour market.

What challenges and barriers do my clients face?

My clients face inequalities in graduate outcomes which are premised on some of the challenges below.

• Lack of financial capital.
• Lack of social capital.
• Lack of work experience in the sector they wish to go into.
• Poor A-level results or BTEC results (UCAS tariff points) which negatively influences their ability to apply for graduate programmes.
• Lack of proper careers information, advice, and guidance from school to university.
• Lack of confidence.
• Lack of self-belief.
• Lack of knowledge about what their options are.
• Lack of positive role models who look like them in the sectors and or companies they want to work in who they can relate to.

Most of them have overcome numerous challenges and have achieved decent grades despite their personal circumstances and backgrounds. Several of them not only study but also hold down full-time or part-time jobs (i.e., in Retail & Hospitality) and some of them are parents as well. So, many of them have not had or do not have the luxury to dedicate most of their time to studying and enjoying their student experience.

This has an adverse impact on the following things:

• The degree grade they achieve.
• Their ability to participate in extra-curricular activities.
• Their ability to gain relevant sector specific work experience i.e., internships and placements.
• Their access to go on the ERASMUS soon to be Turing scheme.
• Their ability to do a sandwich year.

How can we develop and enhance graduate outcomes?

All of the above are essential to promote and enhance their graduate outcomes. In contrast to students who derive from affluent backgrounds that attend prestigious universities the students and graduates I work with are at a distinct disadvantage. I believe that the disadvantages that university students like the ones that I work with countenance can be reduced by a cross-sectoral and multifaceted approach:

What can schools do?

• Having a robust and effective career’s strategy which promotes aspiration, ambition, achievement, and social mobility.
• Partnering with good organisations to promote and enhance social mobility in CEIAG (i.e.,Speakers for School, Sutton Trust, STEM Ambassador Programme, Debate Mate Schools, The Careers & Enterprise Company etc.).
• Every school in England should ensure that young people have had at least 12 weeks of work experience by the time they leave Year 11. Many of the young graduates and final year students I work with did not have any or they only had 1 week’s experience in the workplace. Futhermore, if secondary school students decide to enter the workforce then quality work experience for at least three months is vital so they can understand and gain experience of the world of work.

What can universities do?

• Ensuring that students know about the services available to them from Day 1 i.e., most importantly the Careers Service.
• Ensuring that every student undertakes an accredited Employability module in their first year at university.
• Ensuring that lecturers who usually derive from the middle-class have high expectations for students who come from working class and BAME backgrounds.
• Ensuring that work-placements are a compulsory component of the curriculum i.e., for Level 4 and 5 students i.e., Work-based modules.
• Ensuring that students work on live projects and briefs, so they gain first-hand experience of working with industry.

What can employers do?

• Top employers should change their recruitment and selection criteria of graduates because some graduates that I work with may have gained poor results at A-levels or for their BTEC, but they have a First-Class honours degree or 2:1. N.B. They can use ‘Contextual Recruitment’.
• Top employers should also select students and graduates from a wider talent pool than merely Oxbridge and the Russell Group. Good graduates are not only at top universities they are at all universities.
• Top employers can do more to partner with ‘New universities’ or ‘former Polytechnics’ by: providing scholarships, committing to employ degree apprentices up to Level 7, providing internship opportunities etc.

What can government do?

The UK government needs to do more to help students and graduates. Higher Education has become a commodity and students are paying excessive amounts of money to attend universities and many of them are leaving university at a disadvantage due to the endemic inequalities that they face in the education system and society at large. Poor and working-class students should not have to pay tuition fees in the first instance. The students that I work with are struggling to find graduate employment at the best of times and with Covid-19 this is compounded, and they have a huge debt looming over them. They are taking on jobs when they should be studying to get by. Tuition should be free for students who come from a household where parents or mature students earn less than £50,000 (means tested) and they should be in receipt of grants. I believe that tuition fees should be capped at no more than £3,000 per annum. Those who can pay university fees should pay but those who cannot should not.

Additionally, the government needs to do better to make universities care more about their students and graduates and not merely jump-start into action and focus on graduate outcomes at the end of the final year and when students have graduated to try to achieve good results on the HESA Graduate Outcomes Survey. To get good graduate outcomes universities need to highlight the importance of CEIAG from Day 1 and implement effective interventions from the outset right through to completion of the student lifecycle at university.

The government should also take a leaf out of the Scottish government book and prioritise good quality CEIAG from Primary 7/Year 6 onwards as Skills Development Scotland does. They need to recognise that many students do not have access to consistent and good quality CEIAG. The government abolished Connexions in 2012. It was established in 2000 and it was a universal CEIAG service for young people in the UK from 13–19 (25 for young people with SEND) years of age. Since, then, it has been incumbent on Local Authorities and schools to provide CEIAG but, not every child does see a Careers Adviser when they are at school and it very much depends on what school children go to. This is hardly good enough to warrant what one would call quality careers advice and guidance. Whilst the government has invested in CEIAG through the CEC you cannot expect a volunteer run network of Enterprise Advisers to be able to fill the ginormous void that Connexions has left.

Conclusion

Finally, I believe that everyone should be able to reach their full potential without being hindered by education inequality, lack of opportunity, financial barriers, classism, elitism, racism, or another other impediment. The graduates and final year students I work with whether young or old all deserve the ability to lead happy and fulfilling lives where they can be financially independent and socially mobile. Therefore, from school to university there should be cohesive and joint up structures in place to support and promote good CEIAG, social mobility and employability. This needs to be Education and Employment policy from central government. Also, our top employers need to truly be committed to equalising the playing field and not just pay lip service to their Corporate Social Responsibility and Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion agendas.