Students losing faith they will work in sector their degree is based in

Due to the uncertainty COVID-19 has brought with it, just above two-fifths of final year university students are still planning on going in to a job that relates to their degree.

This was discovered by National Graduate Week which takes place between the 21st and 25th of September 2020, who found that 43 per cent of students still plan to work in a sector that relates to their degree. Under a fifth said they plan to do volunteer work and work experience to build up their skills.

It was also found that 48 per cent of university students have no plans for when their degree comes to an end, and 51 per cent said they are undecided on what career path they wish to take.  With 19 per cent saying they have given it no thought at all.

Medicine is the most reliable subject to study to follow a career in your degree course, with 54 per cent of those who study the subject actually end up working in that field. Engineering came in as a close second at 52 per cent and Law at 44 per cent.

Sharon Walpole, the spokesperson for www.NationalGraduateWeek.co.uk, said:

These are hugely unpredictable times and the future of any student is of course in contention. Many students don’t know what the state of their profession will be like when they graduate and similarly many students who have finished university haven’t even had their official graduation ceremony as of yet. It is no surprise that so many students haven’t planned for what is coming up simply because it’s impossible to predict what the next few months will look like.

In order to obtain these results, National Graduate Week spoke to 2,450 UK university students.

Graduate recruitment has been hit hard by COVID-19 as inAugust, HRreview reported that the number of graduate jobs advertised decreased by 60 per cent.

Graduate job searching for university leavers have also fallen by 8 per cent year-on-year. Applications made to graduate roles have also dropped by 33 per cent year-on-year.

 

 

 

 

Avatar
Darius McQuaid

Darius is the editor of HRreview. He has previously worked as a finance reporter for the Daily Express. He studied his journalism masters at Press Association Training and graduated from the University of York with a degree in History.