Gap year students working on a Raleigh project at San Lucas off Costa Rica
Taxpayers are to fund gap years for graduates to keep them off the dole queue. Hundreds of university leavers will get public money from Lord Mandelson's department to help them to travel to places such as Costa Rica, Borneo and India.
The number of graduates who are unemployed ix months after leaving university has reached its highest level since records began, with one in ten not in jobs or further study. Career experts say that 80,000 will hunt in vain for work this summer.
Critics say that the government was bribing graduates to go on gap years in order to massage the unemployment figures.
The government is giving £500,000 to Raleigh, the gap year company running the programme.
I am not a fan of gap years although I know many universities encourage them, but I do think if students want to have a trip abroad the taxpayer should not be paying for it. A much more sensible way of using our money would be to have a community service programme in this country. Many European countries make such programmes mandatory and I have yet to hear any European young person say it did not benefit them in some way.
Higher Education Minister David Lammy said volunteering would help new graduates develop "the communication and leadership skills that are so highly valued in the workplace." These skills could be learned here in the UK without financing 500 young people to travel abroad. No matter which way I view this, it is a blatant attempt to massage the unemployment figures right enough.
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4 comments:
Prince Charles has had forty gap years, all paid for by us. But I think that's massaging the unemployable figure, rather than the unemployment figure.
Clever, Vronsky. Why didn't I think of that? I know!
Och see them pesky students, no like the days when i was a student. I had to fight tooth and nail to fund my gap year.
Ach well i suppose its money well spent eh Subrosa ? lol.
Spook I shall refrain from typing a truthful response. :)
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