Leaving school and going straight into work used to be the norm, but last year just one in five 18-year-olds did so – and a new analysis of modern job specifications helps explain why.
According to a report by Paul Wiltshire, “Discrimination & Pretence of Graduate-only Jobs”, entry-level positions and traineeships once snapped up by motivated school leavers are now being advertised as “graduate-only.”
The issue, argues Wiltshire, a parent campaigner against mass higher education and author of a research paper titled Why is the average Graduate Premium falling? – Is Labour’s push for more than half of children to enter higher education has created a surplus of graduates desperate for work.
Companies now know that even basic, low-paid roles can be filled by 21-year-olds with a degree.
And with more and more positions categorised as graduate-only, increasing numbers of school leavers receiving their A-level results today are being forced down the university pathway, fuelling an arms race of dubious qualifications.
Many emerge after three or four years, says Wiltshire, burdened with life-changing levels of debt and little or no improvement in their earning potential. The report is published today on his University Watch website.
“If we raise the number of graduates being produced in 2024, 495,000 UK applicants were accepted onto undergraduate courses – then it follows that we are likely to create a surplus of graduates,” he says.
“The jobs market has reacted by mopping up the surplus of graduates by dubiously defining more roles as being graduate only, and creating a whole new market in pretend graduate roles.
Graduates end up settling for pretend graduate roles where there is no genuine reason why you need to have studied for a further three years to do the job.”
The flip side is that teenagers who feel more study is not for them, or whose parents cannot afford to top up inadequate university maintenance loans, are locked out of roles because they have become “graduate only.”
But do you really need a degree to work in these places?
Bowling alley
Hollywood Bowl Group’s “hospitality graduate scheme” is advertised as a “fast-track to set applicants on the path to leadership.” Although the job spec says that “passion and drive are what count most,” it specifies a 2:2 degree in any subject.”
Mentoring by “industry professionals” is promised to help “build the skills needed to become a future hospitality leader.” The reality is less glamorous, however.
Rotating through various areas of the business, the successful candidate will spend their time taking bookings, allocating bowling lanes, handing out bowling shoes, taking orders for drinks and fast food, and keeping an eye on the arcade games.
On the plus side, benefits include half-price meals when working and one in four weekends off.
Wiltshire says that the advert is typical of those fuelling a vicious circle of pretence, where employers advertise basic jobs as graduates-only and university leavers apply, grateful for the opportunity of a “graduate role.”
Taxpayers are left to pick up the tab for the mountain of unpaid student debt and to help fund degree courses of dubious merit, taken by young people who then go into roles that, with on-the-job training, can easily be done without three years at university.
Chris McGovern, chair of the Campaign for Real Education, describes the bowling alley post as “an ‘anyone-can-do-it’ sort of job”.
“To categorise this as a graduate role makes a mockery of the time, effort, and especially the investment necessary to get a degree,” he says.
Hollywood Bowl Group did not respond to a request for comment.
Pest control
Graduate trainees for Pest Solutions, Aberdeen, spend three years working towards a Level 4 BPCA Certified Field Biologist qualification (A-levels are classed as Level 3 qualifications, while a degree, which the candidate will already have, is Level 6).
The job spec says the company would prefer a graduate from a science background, but that “all degrees will be considered” for the role, which has a starting salary of £26,250.
According to the advert, 40 per cent of UK pest control industry employees are due to retire in the next decade, so “there has never been a more exciting time or opportunity for young professionals to establish themselves as the industry leaders of tomorrow.”
Applicants are likely to be academically trained graduates who will be acquiring the on-the-job know-how to enable them to lay down rat poison, among other things.
Yet this qualification is one step higher than an A-level and, therefore, presumably accessible to anyone who has successfully completed A-levels.
Instead of gaining occupation-related skills on the job, however, the advertised role requires applicants to have degrees, which now cost £9,535 a year and leave students with an average debt on graduation in excess of £53,000.
Iain Mansfield, head of education at the conservative think tank Policy Exchange, says it is clear that many job adverts which demand that the applicant be a graduate do not actually require a degree.
“Too many degrees are not worth the paper they are written on,” he says. “Employers who arbitrarily demand a degree are cutting themselves off from over half the workforce and are likely to be missing out on good talent.”
Chris Cagienard, managing director of Pest Solutions and President of BPCA, the UK trade association for the professional pest control industry, said: “We do not discriminate in any way and hire both graduates and non-graduates into the same training framework on the same pay structure with the same prospects.
“Many unfairly stereotype the vital public health pest control industry as low-skilled, and we find that both degrading and insulting.
A professional pest controller must have a comprehensive understanding of animal behaviour, biology, legislation, chemical modes of action, non-target species, health and safety, and other related aspects at a high level.
“Wiltshire wrongly states in his half-baked research report that we are advertising a ‘pretend graduate role’.
We are trying to attract graduates to consider a career in our industry as a sustainable option; most people don’t ever consider our industry unless we showcase it to them. This is especially true with attracting graduates ... Our graduate recruitment efforts have [also] played a significant role in attracting women into the industry.”
Estate agent
Foxtons promises its graduate estate agents £31,000 a year and days spent “driving a company car – the ‘iconic’ Foxtons Mini Cooper – conducting viewings and selling the London dream”.
Based in Wood Green, in north London, the successful applicant will be trained in property negotiation and receive fast-track career progression, putting them on the route to “earning over £100,000 per year”.
Graduates without a driving licence can apply for the Foxtons graduate account executive scheme, with a salary of £28,550 to £60,000 a year. The right candidate will be at the “heart of the action” at the company’s “buzzing” HQ in Chiswick, west London.
Foxtons seems to be in line with Labour thinking on the issue. Housing minister Matthew Pennycook tabled an amendment last year to Tory housing reforms (when the MP for Greenwich and Woolwich was a shadow minister) to require all estate agents to have at least one A-level, and all estate agency directors to have an undergraduate degree.
But Andrew Tettenborn, a law professor at Swansea University’s Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law, argues that the pretend graduate jobs phenomenon risks spawning yet more unnecessary degree courses to fill the pretend demand.
“If estate agents start demanding degrees for property negotiators, the vice-chancellor of Bog Lane Uni, always on the look-out for a new product line and profit centre, will happily start a new degree in Property Sales and Management.
Whereupon more estate agents will demand the shiny new degree […] And so the merry-go-round spins on,” he says.
A spokesman for Foxtons says: “With the exception of a small number of head office roles, every position is open to both graduates and non-graduates, and while some roles are advertised as ‘graduate’ to attract interest, they remain equally accessible to all, with identical roles advertised for school leavers. This year, 56 per cent of our hires joined without a degree.”
Shoe shop
Profeet Sports Lab, in Fulham, west London, is advertising for a “footwear sales technician” with a degree, ideally in sports science or a sport-related field.
The successful candidate will be trained to carry out a biomechanical assessment of the customer’s running/walking style using 2D video gait analysis and 3D foot pressure scanning to enable them to sell the right shoes, trainers and boots.
Training will also be provided on “moulding and fabrication of custom insoles as well as footwear specifics.”
A “competitive package” includes £13.85 an hour, an end-of-season bonus dependent on performance and a staff discount. Working hours are Tuesday to Saturday, with late closing on a Thursday.
It is difficult to see how essentially working in a shop should require a degree, according to John O’Connell, chief executive of the pressure group TaxPayers’ Alliance.
“There is now a conveyor belt of young graduates, some with largely worthless degrees, moving into jobs and careers they would have been far better suited for if they had spent the years in training and employment,” he says.
“We need a radical rethink of who should be going to university and what funding they should be able to access.”
Profeet Sports Lab did not respond to a request for comment.
Admin
Advertised through a recruitment agency, the “graduate job” involves providing “high-level” administrative support to the chief executive and managers of a communications agency.
The graduate – who needs to have “a passion for delivering high-quality service” – will arrange travel, schedule meetings, appointments and events, screen and respond to emails, calls and messages, draft and edit correspondence and process the chief executive’s expenses. A £27,000 to £40,000-a-year salary is dependent on experience.
The role, in old-fashioned terminology, is that of a secretary, and one that would have been filled by a keen school leaver in previous decades.
Andy Crysell, a businessman who launched, ran, and sold a strategy agency that had more than 100 staff and clients such as Apple, Nike, Netflix and Ikea, left school at 16.
He criticises “exclusionary job specs written on auto-pilot” by HR departments in companies that “make so much noise about how vital it is to embrace different perspectives and make space for all.”
“If I hadn’t started my own business, I would have found it very hard to secure a way into this sector, as almost all roles – entry level and upwards – set a blanket expectation of a degree-level education,” says the social mobility charity trustee.
“This is an absurd state of affairs and one that urgently needs addressing.”
