Yup. Arts students are a bit fucked.

The above quote, by Britain’s favourite straggly-haired Irishman articulates perfectly the fear that many undergraduates have with regards to their job prospects. Ignore engineers and accountancy students, who seem swamped with offers.  Ignore medics, who seem to bask in that ethereal glow of doing something that is a) difficult, b) helps mankind and c) helps you to pull birds.

No, I’m talking about us soft, arty-farty, liberal types: students of History, Law, Philosophy, the languages, English Literature, Politics. Even Economics and some of the sciences. Now, I don’t quite share the scepticism towards my degree that the distinguished owner of this website does. I do honestly believe in the virtues and nobility of my degree (History & Politics, should you ask).

Graduates were like salmon swimming upstream. Except now big grizzlies lurk around the mouth of the river, picking off stragglers

The problem is this. Most of us, broadly speaking, come from vaguely similar backgrounds. The Crispins and Tarquins parade off to Uncle Rupert’s former haunt at Oxford or Cambridge.  Those of us less talented, and privileged, totter off to the likes of Sheffield, Southampton, Birmingham and Nottingham to take our studies, have the best time of our lives and then saunter off into the sunset.

Without wishing to stereotype too broadly, both History & Politics students seem to stem from the same mould: comfortably middle-class, left-leaning and educated. (The only difference being that whereas History students often live in a slightly fuddy-duddy world of intellectualism, Politics students are all rage, alternative music, weird earrings and radicalism. But I digress.)

Many of us assumed, from the way older relatives and schoolteachers talked, that having graduated from a ‘good’ university with a ‘good’ grade in a ‘good’ subject, we would slot into our place in the world, like a salmon swimming upstream. Except now big grizzlies lurk around the mouth of the river, picking off stragglers. We are beginning to feel like the lost generation.

The excitement in being a 21 year old with a degree and a great future appears to have subsided in doom and gloom. We hear the media talking about the dearth of prospects for young graduates, especially for those in the sort of courses mentioned. I long for an era when a young bloke could set sail for the colonies and the far-flung reaches of the Empire (not that I am in any way an Imperialist), seek his fortune and become a man, return home to a nice little place in the BBC, meet a thoroughly nice young lady and settle down to a life of comfort in the Home Counties.

Instead the Empire is gone, the BBC resembles some sort of backwards gulag (people come out, but you never see them going in…) and John Prescott has concreted over so much of Southern England that you might be forgiven for thinking that the Luftwaffe had specifically targeted rural Hertfordshire and Essex.

Rather than being excited about what the future could hold, I don’t think I am alone in feeling a sense of dread. The world no long feels full of potential and possibility and the bright lights of the city are not shining so brightly. The answer to all this is work. And how to get work? Get experience. How to get experience?

So far my own personal experience consists of a two-day stint at The Independent’s offices in Kensington. This did, on the positive side, help me to confirm that this was what I wanted to do. The glassy environs of The Daily Mail’s building were impressive, if a little brash. The section into which The Independent was crammed was a little oasis of clever, exciting and very likeable and approachable people, who all seemed to love what they were doing.  The problem, however, is the competitiveness of the industry.

I, similar to many other wannabe reporters I imagine, am currently trying to prostitute myself to every media outlet in London, with pleading emails and sniffly phone-calls (warning: the sympathy vote doesn’t work). I need to, I am told, get far more experience, get my own website, get stories published, find contacts and then maybe, just maybe, I may get into the industry I want to be in.

Unfortunately, the recipe for success hasn’t changed. It remains largely down to hard work, a little bit of talent, and is heavily reliant on good luck. The work place is a great deal more diverse than we may realise, not to mention a lot more complicated than we might care to imagine. Although this means that our view up the beanstalk is often obscured, there may around the corner be a little escalator that takes us right to the top. The point of this piece? Don’t lose faith.

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1. Website sells off desirable internships for charity

Yes, someone actually paid hundreds of pounds to work for free at the Daily Express

The Guardian’s Graduate section has a piece bemoaning the sale of internships and work experience. A charity, Pilotlight, have been selling placements with Channel 5 and the Daily Express, among others. (Let’s just ignore why on earth someone would want to work for either of these two companies, for now).

The Guardian’s message seems to be that this is a very bad thing. And on some level, it is. To get ahead in careers such as the media or politics, you have to spend a large chunk of your early twenties working for free. It’s difficult to keep a second job going if your full time job involves rushing around London from 8am until 8pm five days a week, picking up your MP’s dry cleaning.

So to pay for your six month stint of tea-making and dry cleaning collecting you have to: A) have lots of savings B) have rich parents, or c) live on the poverty line with a part time job. C isn’t very appealing and so people without A or B are often unable to get internships for financial reasons. Thus a glass ceiling appears for the less well off as you can’t get jobs in the media or politics without some unpaid labour. They will never become a doyen of work experience, like Tom Meltzer.

All having to pay for work experience does is remove the pretence: work experience is for people who can afford it. This is sad and upsetting but it’s true. As for Pilotlight’s auctioning off internships, it’s sad and upsetting but at least it’s in the name of a good cause.

Related posts:

1. Grim times for graduates – but don’t lose faith