New scheme to create thousands of graduate opportunities

Lord Mandelson's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills recently revealed a new plan to generate more graduate jobs and training opportunities for young people.

The programme hopes to create around 35,000 new apprenticeship positions for degree-holders during the course of the next two years.

Dan Hawkes, co-founder of the Graduate Recruitment Bureau (GRB), told Brookson that employers are currently in a biased market where they can "pick and choose" candidates due to the high number of graduate jobseekers.

This means that companies can afford to be more discerning when they vet applicants. As a result, they are looking in detail at the quality of degrees, grades, A-level results and host of other criteria before making decisions, he added.

"Any initiative that increases the skills of people entering the workforce and meets the needs of employers is going to give them a valuable injection of skills. I think it is a good idea," he said.

In related news, the UK government is publishing a higher education strategy. This 10-year model will ask each academic institution to list the employment rates, drop-out rates and amount of teaching time in each of its courses, reports the Guardian.

This information will be made available to the public so that young people can make more informed choices when deciding what to study.