Competition for jobs is and will remain intense so beware of taking a 3 year cruise at university. It will be costly in two ways. Tuition/accommodation costs often mean graduates emerge with debts of £20,000 – £40,000 and rely on future earnings to repay them, if they can get a job
The unemployment rate for graduates varies from 0 per cent (dentistry and medicine) to 15 per cent (Middle Eastern and African Studies) but for most subjects is within the range 5-9 per cent. In other words, for most subjects the chances of getting a job are about the same. Interestingly, business studies, a subject that is often considered to be highly employable, comes out in the middle at 7 per cent. One reason for some similarity in employment prospects is that a significant proportion of job vacancies do not specify any subject at all. You can take the most obscure subject in the UCAS Directory and still have over 40 per cent of jobs open to you. Another reason is that class of degree is important: students with first-class honours are very rarely unemployed whatever subject they studied.
Interestingly overseas employers are often more interested in the “personality” of the candidate than straight academic grades and the trump card for applicants is a professionally crafted CV that brings out their personality.
Author – Chris Slay
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