FROM OXBRIDGE TO OXTAIL SOUP

Brian Jenner gives a first-hand

account of the humiliations facing the unemployed Oxford graduate

IN 1987, before I went up to university, I gleaned from a Times article by Dr John Rae, the former headmaster of Westmin- ster, that soon after graduation I could reasonably expect to drive a red Porsche in which I could roar up the school drive, scattering my former teachers like nature's rejects in the race of life. The college bursar in his welcoming address confirmed this expectation. Every- One could run up debts with a clear con- science: 'The employment prospects for LIxford graduates are excellent.' Finalists M their penultimate term could cycle up the Banbury Road, sign up for a few lavish corporate presentations in the Randolph Hotel, and then pick a profession with a galloping salary. Eighteen months after leaving Oxford, I am on the dole, living at home, with out- standing student debts. I meet my friends in greasy spoon cafés, where we haggle over who pays for the teas. No recent grad- uates, to my knowledge, are earning `giga- bucks' or even 'megabucks'. Where did we go wrong? I Paid no thought to my future while I was at university. Most of my coevals had no idea what they wanted to do either. We Were just issued with employment directo- ries with unprepossessing titles like Go! and Get! Now students can use a computer Program called Prospect. You feed in your Personal details and the screen will tell you What to do with your life. I studied modern languages. Whenever I raised my predicament, I was told that 1992 was the answer. They meant 1993. I Managed to secure a placement at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg for the following April. I had to pass the interven- ing time by doing menial work, like thou- sands of other graduates.

The most effective way of obtaining casual jobs is to register with an employ- ment agency. They can offer clerical, retail and catering work for short periods of lime. A hundred years ago I might have °Limped into old school friends in Ceylon °r along the Suez Canal. Instead I found them in the stockroom of Debenhams, Washing up in kitchens and filing accounts in the Co-op. One of our number was digging graves in Kensal Green.

These jobs were handed out by chirpy `consultants', who exercised their powers shrewdly. Since the jobs became more scarce, I had to ingratiate myself to the top of a list. One day I reluctantly agreed to work as a dinner-man at a school 30 miles away. Then, at the last moment, I baulked. I knew Michelle, my employment consultant, would never forgive me.

I was forced to claim income support and housing benefit. I had to learn to live on beans, potatoes and oxtail soup. It was a big triumph to get a verbal commission from Punch. I could incur some expenses. My contribution never even earned an acknowledgment. Punch, like so many other businesses, had gone bust.

One of the standard, temporary solu- tions for graduates who are unemployed is to go abroad. However, there is no diaspo- ra for executive positions in Liege or sinecures in Munich. The bulk of the opportunities are 'teaching English as a foreign language' or animating Euro Dis- ney. Having done a short course, which costs about £800, a graduate with a qualifi- cation to teach English as a foreign lan- guage can cross the Channel for a subsistence wage.

I thought I was boarding the European gravy train when April finally arrived. I did have three months with the Continent's gilded youth, working 35 hours a week, for £300 a month. There was sadly no place to go when that was over. I merely learnt how to enter the EEC administrative assis- tant competition.

Back in England I discovered a friend from Durham University had actually been rejected by the Church of England. A former editor of Cherwell, a first-class historian, had been selected from among hundreds to become a trailer writer for Coronation Street. The statistics showed that I just ate Snugglybum.' youthful dreams of riches for all in the City and industry had evaporated. Of those who left Oxford in 1991, 280 individuals, 10.2 per cent, had found a job in commerce, compared with 450, 19.5 per cent, in 1987.

I took the traditional option of teaching in a boarding-school. But what would John Betjeman have made of the GCSE? I had hairbands flicked at me by ill-mannered heiresses, and the head of department told me that the girls found my lessons 'boring'. At the end of the first term I was told that it would be 'mutually beneficial' to leave for a Postgraduate Certificate in Eduction. That is no formality. Nationally, there is a 60 per cent increase in the number of teacher-training applications.

There were about 600 candidates at the EEC administrative assistant examinations at Wembley in December (forgetting those in Birmingham and Edinburgh). Theoreti- cally, we were all competing on a level European playing-field. Further investiga- tion revealed that 30 inconspicuous individ- uals had been groomed by the British civil service for two years. There are approxi- mately 150 places available to the 20,000 applicants across the Community.

In despair, I went to see a careers advis- er. I confessed to him that I had a third. Many graduates are made to feel ashamed of a 2.2 at interview.

`Young people fill in an application form at 18 and find themselves in a wonderful position. They expect to leave university by filling in another form, and find themselves transported to an equally comfortable set- up. The world isn't like that,' the careers adviser said. He pushed towards me a leaflet about the 'Creative Job Search', a strategy by which you conjure jobs out of thin air. It involves getting indirect experi- ence of a profession at a low level, contact- ing members of your old college and exploiting family connections: the kind of Oxbridge mafia tactics which make Andrew Neil apoplectic.

I protested. 'In 1993, the percentage of graduates finding a permanent job is likely to fall below 40 per cent. Short-term unem- ployment is predicted to rise to 60 per cent,' I said.

`You can do anything you want,' he beamed benignly, 'through patience and persistence.'

Tales of nervous breakdowns, the reces- sion and the irreversible decline of white- collar employment do not faze careers' advisers. 'The worst defeatism in years,' declares one experienced observer from the Association of Graduate Careers Advi- sory Services in the latest press release. They blame many graduates for their naivety and incompetence.

Goethe wrote a huge novel, Wilhelm Meister, about the trials and tribulations suffered by a young man on the way to finding a vocation. His verdict was: 'The individual who is guided by a higher hand, despite all stupid mistakes and embarrass- ments, still reaches a happy ending.'