Video Ref - you're living in Dail Wail land if you honestly believe that highly educated people believe that jobs are below them. I know a good few of the type you're describing, and without exception they've done 'menial' jobs. I work with one such now... Uni education, top level pass, now working for £7.00 and hour and applying for jobs relevant to his qualification. None of the people I know believe anything other than a job on a CV shows they are willing to work and 'get stuck in'.

Meanwhile, back in the real world....

Just noticed this. Outrageous. Are people being expected to work for nothing back home? Disgusting. Shame on whoever thought of that.

...back in the real world, I've held two positions involving recruitment - one in training & recruitment for a couple of large call centres, and another as a recruitment consultant, ranging from entry level to senior executive.

In both jobs I met, spoke to and interviewed many, many dozens of graduates and can tell you very many of them see such jobs as below them. We would offer these highly educated people a position in the knowledge they would probably be actively seeking something else, and they would turn their nose up. A permanent job with a low but acceptable wage - certainly something to live on while hunting for their career entry.

Some graduates - not all of course, and I've met and placed the hard workers too - can be extremely snobbish about their choice of work. It's understandable - they've worked for 3 years and built up a load of debt to obtain a qualification that's supposed to help them on the career ladder, and they're being offered the same role and wage as those who left school or college with few qualifications at all. Who wouldn't hold out until they 'find something better'?

I don't doubt you at all, my eldest found something similar when she left Uni with a law degree, because we gave our two kids no other option than to have to work for their money (we don't subsidise them at all other than provide me as a free taxi driver), she was writing for jobs in the legal profession before she even left Uni, she quickly realised that two years ago nobody in that profession was taking on new starters and so she lowered her sights and has been working these last two years in a legal services based position in what other "traditional" law firms would look down their noses at in a "call centre" sort of way - meanwhile she knows of at least two other fellow graduates who are still hanging on, probably being supported by gullible parents, in the hope that they will get a position as a trainee solicitor with all fees paid, with their two year old degree and no experience.

Realistic viewpoints and the young often do not mix very well.

I think it's partly down to universities and 6th forms pushing degrees in such a way that makes it appear like "do a degree here and you'll end up in a fantastic job" plus parents who often grew up in a time when people with degrees did get good jobs on the whole after leaving Uni.

... and, I think, an element of employers, in a flooded jobs market, deciding that jobs that, previously, might not have required applicants to be a graduate, deciding to insist upon that.

I mentioned it before, but the growth in tertiary education is a plank of the neo-liberal approach, as highlighted in Ha-Joon Chang's 23 Things. Switzerland, for instance, had had a low level of tertiary education, but obviously a rather successful economy. And even there, in recent years, the whole tertiary education thing has been being pushed. Still, I suppose it creates jobs in service economies ...

Hmm ... I wonder how much this is pushing university applications back up, despite the initial decline due to increased fees?

The thing is that there is no 'argument' to be had with the likes of you, as countless posts prove. You're not worth engaging with at any level above disdain and contempt.

Oh that's almost certainly a major factor in why people take degrees. My own job doesn't require degree level knowledge, but there's no way I'd have got the job without one.

Which she appears to be doing and what the court case highlighted was that these compulsory work placements are nothing more than inappropriate cheap labour.

We took on a couple of graduates last year, both mature students. I interviewed both. One had worked for the local council in a low paid job before getting his degree. The other had worked as a taxi diver while doing the same.

The idea that the fact they did that had any baring on them being employed here (an IT company) is nuts yet that seems to be the governments main justification for forcing people onto these schemes. "It will show you are employable and can get out of bed regularly ready for work" seems to be the line they take. This is absolutely crazy. If they actually think someone having been placed on a compulsory work placement scheme for Poundland would get them any further down the line for a job here they are totally out of touch with reality.

Everybody knows it's compulsory so since when was compulsion any indicator of a willingness to work?

The fact our two graduates had jobs before was to be expected given they were mature students but if they had been unemployed for several years yet went and got educated that would count for far more in my eyes than an entry on their CV which amounts to forced labour stacking shelves.