Surviving the recession, eighties style
It’s all gloom and doom in the national media these days. It’s aeons since they’ve had a full-blown recession to report and the feeding frenzy is amazing to behold. I had half an ear to the Today programme as I munched my muesli the other day – another tale of woe about how truly dreadful this is for new graduates: ‘the worst economic situation to graduate into since 1980’.
Hey, wait! That was the year I graduated! My morning-befuddled brain whirred into action (oldies love to reminisce). Was our 1980 generation terminally blighted by being spewed out of the education system at the precise moment that the newly elected Mrs Thatcher was dismantling the post-war political consensus and plunging us into economic darkness? Things were certainly tight, and contrary to modern myth, student debt was not unheard of. The Welfare State was under pressure – signing on and sitting it out not the option it had once been. So what did we do?
To jog my memory, I rang my old friend, Mary, a planning consultant in the City, who has sharper recall than me and we mulled it over. The first thing we thought was that we, like you, had degrees recognisable to the outside world as ‘class’. That’s a big advantage – remember, when the media talk of ‘graduates’ they are thinking of all of them, not just those from the top ten universities. Being in the elite doesn’t make you immune to unemployment, but it helps (if you’re prepared to take your chances – or amuse your unemployed selves in a way that adds value to your York degree).
Lots of our generation stayed on and did a second degree while the economic storm raged outside. Others wrote carefully worded application letters that backed up the first degree with a literate, well-expressed statement and got the graduate trainee posts that were going. One friend, notably, took a job as a level crossing keeper and sat in his little shed reading philosophy to keep his degree bright and shiny until the situation eased – alas, Mrs T. abolished lovely little jobs like that, but you see what I’m getting at.
So my advice to third years is to pitch for the jobs that are going, think about that masters degree or do some volunteering/placement work. Mary says they’re still taking people on for traineeships and placements, but you have to stand out from the crowd with an honest, engaging and well-written letter. Remember to tell them about your extra-curricular and transferable skills. And don’t despair – what goes down does eventually come back up again and you need to be optimistic and positive so that you’ll look good to employers both in and out of recession.
First and second years, meanwhile, can sit back and enjoy all the price slashing – you never thought your money would go so far.
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