 By Graham Trickey, Editor, Prospects. The job of monarch requires the ‘right’ social class background and funny accent. A graduate of Cambridge or St Andrews University might do, but definitely not someone with second class honours from Luton University. Other vacancies are a little more open. At least they don’t ask for the new employee to be the offspring of the current incumbent. But graduates who went to an unpopular comprehensive rather than a fee-paying independent school may still not have an equal chance of gaining one of a limited number of graduate-level opportunities. Even graduates who attended Oxford or Cambridge, but who were judged to be from a lowly background, earned on average 16 per cent less than their equally well qualified contemporaries from professional family backgrounds, a recent report from the Council for Industry and Higher Education disclosed. Another distinction uncovered by the report was between institutions, with a descending order of average rewards for the alumni of Oxbridge, then the older universities, and at the bottom the new universities. Such conclusions may have also been reached (without the help of a research grant) by readers who are looking at this publication while travelling to their stop-gap retail job, rather than studying the Financial Times on the way to their job in the City. Class distinctions in the UK are as hard to miss as Buckingham Palace when walking up the Mall, but understanding the mechanisms of discrimination may increase the chances of overcoming it. In theory standardised application systems, as used by the major graduate recruiters, offer equal chances to everyone. Also theoretically, a 2:1 at Staffordshire University should be of the same standard as one from Oxford. At the same time any recruiters who face large numbers of applicants will look for ways of narrowing them down. One familiar tactic is to demand a certain level of UCAS points, which are most likely to be attained by someone who had the advantage of hot-housing in independent schools. Another approach is to target selected universities (whose students may have the same high level of UCAS points). While many major employers do look for applicants from the new universities and sensibly emphasise relevant skills rather than UCAS points, the process of interview and particularly the very close scrutiny undergone by candidates in assessment centres once more favour applicants from professional families, because they will be able to display their class-based self-confidence. A graduate employability project at the University of North London confirmed that recruiters were most likely to recruit white, middle-class graduates who had good A-level results. Employers explained to researchers that such graduates were most likely to have the required self-confidence, good presentation skills and ability to sell themselves. Fortunately, not all recruiters think the same way. In retailing, for example, there is an awareness that customers are diverse and managers need to reflect this. Many major employers have embraced the need to make sure that students from ethnic minorities know about their training schemes. In some cases graduate recruiters give candidates from ethnic minorities opportunities to build up their confidence so that they can do themselves justice in the selection process. The same degree of effort is not yet being made to widen recruitment in terms of social class. Graduates and students who find themselves losing out to more confident rivals - possibly from ‘better’ schools and backgrounds - therefore have little alternative but to do something about it themselves. In practice this means finding chances through work experience and voluntary activities to build up interpersonal skills. Thorough preparation for the job market offers the best hope of breaking through the class ceiling. Related topics
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