British graduates gloomy over job prospects

The September 11 attacks have left British graduates gloomy about their job prospects, a survey showed today.

Less than one in four thought they would go straight from university into a career, down from 49% in 1998, while 72% believed vacancies were down because of what happened to global markets following the World Trade Centre attacks.

A career in the media remained among the most popular options, the survey by High Fliers Research showed, while the popularity of IT was down following the bursting of the dot.com bubble.

High Fliers conducted interviews with just under 14,000 final year students, almost a fifth of this year’s graduating class in the UK.

Almost a quarter, 23%, thought they would have to take the first job they were offered or work for a company they would not have otherwise chosen.

They were making 10% more applications and going for safer careers for example, applications for engineering sector jobs rose 13% on 2001 levels, accountancy 8%, law 5%, finance 4% and the armed forces 3%.

Investment banking, by contrast, saw a 3% drop in applications, while IT was down 6% and management consulting saw interest fall 17%.

Students had fewer expectations on the salary front. In previous years, the researches had found that graduates expected pay to be between 6% and 10% higher than their predecessors had done 12 months before.

However, the class of 2002 were only expecting starting salaries to be 1% higher this year, at an average of £18,700 (€30,000).

And they were leaving with much higher debts - £9,100 (€14,600) on average, up 50% on 2001.

Survey director Martin Birchall said: ‘‘Students’ confidence is lower now than at any time in the last decade and as a result many have been applying for graduate positions in career areas such as accountancy, law and engineering which offer better job security and training for professional qualifications.’’