Of course chemists, physicists and engineers usually found a job in their chosen profession but students who graduated with a language or literature degree, anthropologists and other literary scholars were also able to secure a well paid job for themselves within months of graduating if they chose not to stay at the university to carry out research or to teach. Industry and commerce provided them with opening opportunities for employment knowing that young graduates were adept at reasoning, quick to learn with the ability to express themselves accurately and to negotiate. Even young people who had gained a degree in insectology were able to find a post as an administrator in a factory when thrust into the reality of life. This was especially true if they had graduated from Cambridge or Oxford.

However, at the beginning of our new century this is no longer how things are and especially not in Great Britain with its floundering economy. It is clearly the case that in certain areas British institutes of higher education produce too many graduates, but nowadays it is not only those newly graduating with a degree in Old German who find themselves in difficulties but also graduates of law and the high numbers of students graduating with degrees in psychology, sociology or modern languages. This year 350 thousand British graduates left university and the first job for eighty percent of them will be some kind of traineeship, which enables them to gain practical work experience and in addition helps them to acquire contacts to build their careers.

Even in my own profession alone thousands “hire” themselves out to magazines, radio stations and TV companies as unpaid trainees in the hope that their talent at writing will help them obtain permanent status. The state is well aware of the importance of trainee work: the British Parliament employees 350 unpaid young people to carry out office work. It seems this is the best place to build up their connections. Furthermore, the government set up the Graduate Talent Pool, which for want of anything better systematically helps to secure unemployed graduates unpaid traineeship openings. Before this young people usually found such a position through personal contacts, family or other connections, a method that was chiefly available to those from the middle classes.

However, unpaid traineeships have to make a living from something. Thousands of young people in England pursue unpaid trainee work whose families cannot really support them. Such individuals often take on evening work, mainly in the hospitality industry, and lodge with friends. This is a miserable start to life, yet these young people are still charged with the energy and optimism to do it.

People in Britain have recently begun to ask if employing unpaid trainees is really just exploitation. One suggestion is that they should at least be paid something approaching the minimum wage, which in Great Britain is ₤5.80 per hour for workers over 21. This would certainly drastically reduce the number of openings. “Trainees shouldn’t regard themselves as exploited but rather as lucky,” is how employers view the situation. And it is almost as if the “exploited” agree with this opinion too.