Recently a colleague and I were talking to a postgraduate student at a university careers event, and the topic of internships arose. I mentioned that I had met a graduate in fashion design who wanted to get into fashion journalism. She had already done an unpaid internship with a publisher, and had recently been turned down for another internship with different publisher. She had been given the reason that the unpaid internship had been given to someone with greater experience.
My colleague then quoted the experience of an Italian friend who had been in London getting work experience in a travel agency. Her friend was on a paid scheme funded by the Italian government, but was surprised to find that she was working alongside four British employees who were on unpaid internships. The Italian graduate and the manager were the only team members being paid anything.
The postgraduate student then topped that story with the experience of a friend of his younger sister. This music technology graduate had secured an unpaid placement with a computer games company, in their music and sound effects department. The department of 20 consisted of a paid manager and 19 unpaid interns.
These anecdotes illustrate how inadequate is the UK government’s response to record levels of youth unemployment. Training in job search skills and unpaid work experience do help individuals become more employable; in effect they help the individual move closer to the front of the unemployment queue. But what use is that if the front of the queue is not moving into paid employment? The graduates mentioned in the situations above had succeeded in the recruitment process to get a placement, against completion from many others. They had gained real work experience in the career of their choice. Some of these unpaid work placements could go on for months, but there is no paid job to go to.
From an individual’s point of view, it is advisable to get work experience to improve your employability. My son is an unemployed school-leaver and my daughter is soon to graduate in an arts subject. I will be encouraging both to find internships, unpaid if necessary, to be better placed in the one- million-long queue of unemployed 18-24 year olds. We are aware that the youth unemployment line is not moving forward fast enough, and there will be another year of school leavers and graduates joining it in the summer.
We need to identify the jobs where there are real skill shortages and provide training courses for those trades and professions. The costs per head will be more than the Government’s current cheap but ineffective programmes, but will result in people taking up paid positions which will actually reduce unemployment. Many of the shortage disciplines are various kinds of engineering, because the UK has failed to produce enough of its own.
A more fundamental change to our education system is also required. The British education system needs to develop high quality vocational courses, as the German system has provided for decades. And - this is the step that most British educationalists and teachers will struggle to comprehend – encourage bright pupils to take vocational courses. For most British teachers that sentence will be an oxymoron. In their minds, bright pupils do academic subjects, pupils who are no good at exams do vocational subjects. I think the suggestion is too radical to explain – it just needs to be said at this stage, in the hope that it might sow a seed.
