Nothing to Lose But your Career Structures
TIM GAUNTLETT
When looking at graduate unemployment, too many people blame it on the economic ‘barometer’ and a lack of suitable jobs. A large number of students, however, are finding their degree courses unrelated to the traditional career structure. Increasingly they regard work as not just a way of earning money but a chance to create a particular life-style.
‘Uncareers is about the whole idea that you may be able to do something full-time (or at least most of the time), that you want to do, that you enjoy, and see some purpose in!’ This is how the ‘Directory of Alternative Work’ introduces itself. Uncareers, which produces and distributes the Directory, provides an information service on work to be found outside the conventional job/career system. It is a response to the fact, that by assuming a certain set of values, University career centres have not realised, or provided services for, the work potential of all students.
Work is about activities, about people interacting together, creating a particular life-style. It does not require the participant to be ‘realistic’ and recognise his material contributions, or to structure a career based on status and reward. Full-time work can mean community action projects, community-based social work, co-operative workshops, drama improvisation and street theatre, radical education, the underground press, communal living?alternative job roles which are not covered by the ‘normal’ information and employment agencies.
At Birmingham University Ann Link has provided an informal meeting place, where people can exchange ideas and information about ‘fion-careers’. Ann Link was a science student at Birmingham University. She obtained her degree, and by rights, should have found employment in industry. She didn’t, but instead took up part-time work in a laboratory to pay for her food and rent but, more important, she built up the connections made at university and established ‘Uncareers’. Originally it was to provide an information service for students like herself, who had degrees, found a traditional career unacceptable, but were uncertain and uninformed about their next moves. Here was a demand created by a student population who wanted to know about ‘alternatives’ which necessitated an information service. Ann worked from her own office/bedsitter and compiled the ‘Directory of Alternative Work’,* a document about imaginative and direct projects.
There are two aspects which are worth discussing at this stage?the students’ search for an ‘alternative’ and, second, graduate unemployment. Two branches which I believe to be part of the same tree. University Appointments Boards would explain the unemployment in terms of graduates developing unrealistic expectations, of large firms cutting down on their graduate intake, and of the necessity to revise concepts of graduate employment. This recognises that graduates must pay lip service to the ‘industrial employment barometer’ and that they are tied to a market situation.
The problem of graduate unemployment is not in fact as serious as certain other factors: ? Employment of new graduates 1970 and 1971 {as at 31st December) 1970 1971 No. % No. % Still seeking employment 2,429 5.4 3,703 7.9 Not known 3,790 8.4 4,533 9.7 Entering U.K. employment 17,229 38.1 16,300 34.9 Others (including further study) 21,788 48.1 22,175 47.5 TOTAL in survey 45,236 100 46,711 100 Source: University Grants Committee. As in all sectors of the economy, the jobs have not been available and many large companies have deliberately cut down on their graduate intake. (This applies equally to arts and science graduates.) And although graduates should be the most informed of all groups in society, their isolation means that they rely heavily on information filtering through University Appointment Boards.
However, this ignores the possibility that graduate aspirations develop in fields of activity outside industry and commerce, based upon graduates’ own ideas and involvements. It is here that the expectations are not so much unrealistic as unrelated to the work of UABs.
This denies the existence (not necessarily problematic) of unrelated expectations. These expectations can be due to a variety of reasons: * the nature of student studies, with curriculum development and community related studies * the physical isolation of universities. The newer universities tend to find themselves outside the perimeter of their respective cities * the lack of informed guidance for graduates (none of the University Appointments Boards meet the Heyworth Committee’s standards of staffing?one officer to 150-200 job-seeking graduates) * the continuing universities’ expansion with insufficient thought being given to graduate appointments.
These are only possible reasons, but what must be positively recognised is that we can no longer assume that graduates must adapt themselves to the manpower needs of a technological society. For with the external ‘devaluation’ of a first degree, there has been the parallel development of internal pressure for its revaluation.
Graduates will have to respond to the recruitment drives of the police, banking, insurance, local government and the executive grades of the civil service (jobs conventionally filled by those entering directly from school).
But equally it cannot be ignored that a significant number of graduates do have well-formed ideas and ideals about work about which they are not prepared to compromise?to the extent of accepting periods of unemployment, or living on Social Security in order to undertake an unpaid appointment.
They want something which is practically related to their studies?but which also enables them to Students at an adventure playground in Cardiff relate to a community environment. They find themselves politically and socially motivated to work and live in deprived communities?to express an awareness through participation. It is in response to this wave of feeling that a project such as ‘Uncareers’ has become very necessary. Students are increasingly involving themselves in studies with a practical bias, yet they have lacked the necessary grass-roots knowledge to channel this effectively.
‘Uncareers’ is, on the one hand, informing people about work and on the other hand providing a service for projects based at the community level. These projects need publicity?all kinds of people with varying practical skills are always welcome and needed. Projects where the emphasis lies within the relationship between the work and the worker and upon the interaction of people to facilitate results. To effect this channelling ‘Uncareers’ has compiled ‘The Directory of Alternative Work’, whose contents read as follows:
Exploring what you can do
Living and helping people in a residential situation
Making things: workshops and factories
Groups working with people in local areas
Community action projects
Education
Information/help services
Communications?alternative newspapers, etc.
I have listed them in full, for they show the different areas of involvement, and the varying interpretations given to the phrase ‘community-based projects’. The groups vary as to their geographical location, and in their functions, and although the headings give an indication of the broad spectrum of alternatives, the examples below in no way cover all the listed material.
The directory lists community projects started by ‘non-college students’, members of the underground or alternative society such as the underground press, Release, Street Aid, Bit?projects which have evolved out of the particular needs of young people in London.
Release provides ‘a comprehensive service for people with problems associated with drugs, emergency help with arrests etc., legal and medical advice. There are II workers, who all get ?15 a week (there is also a psychiatric worker, who is paid a salary by the Mental Health Trust; and an unpaid fund-raiser). There are fluctuating numbers of part-time volunteers too. Occasionally new workers are needed.’
It also lists projects existing through a group living and working within a defined area, which are politically inspired, and participate in sharing and solving the same frustrations and injustices e.g. The Notting Hill People’s Association, Stoke Newington People’s Association, Brixton’s Own Boss. Brixton’s Own Boss is ‘a community newspaper, published by a group living together in Brixton, also publicising the area’s prospective redevelopment and helping people organise themselves. Meetings have been held and the Railton People’s Planning Association formed?it now has 500 members.’
Charity organisations are mentioned who have gone into communities under their own names, live within that area, but try to retain an individual identity while providing a particular service not necessarily related to the needs of that area e.g. Simon Community, Cyrenians, St. Mungo Community. All need volunteers, and are given a lot of space in the Directory. The Directory also gives details of students who are responding to their own needs e.g. Student Community Housing ‘run by and for member tenants. It gets short life housing free from Camden Council, patches it up, and then lets it cheap to students and the homeless’. It uses, at the moment, 31 houses, housing about 200 people charging ?2 single room, ?3.50 double room.
Communicating grass-roots ————————-activity
This is not a definitive account of the ‘Directory of Alternative Work’?the examples quoted are all in the London area, and I have mentioned nothing about workshops, theatre groups, or education. The projects themselves are not staffed or orientated towards graduate or student interests, but they represent an area of possible involvement for a, significant number of students. Uncareers has sensed this and tried to respond in an informative manner. The directory is not based on any philosophy nor does it see itself as politically or religiously inspired although it would align itself to the listed projects to the extent of moving towards some kind of social change.
They have tried, by visiting all the projects themselves, to communicate what is happening at the ‘grass roots’ level, and to advertise a variety of needs. They aroused my curiosity as a graduate wanting to develop a practical skill out of what he learnt at university, so I wrote to Uncareers. It is informative, but you have to follow one rule?’Please send a stamped envelope’* Directory of Alternative Work’, 20p (plus stamped envelope) from 298b Pershore Road, Birmingham 5. (This also entitles you to supplements to the Directory for one year.)
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