Business

University helping unemployed graduates

Published 11 February 2010

The university has won £56,000 funding to provide internship opportunities for 35 unemployed and underemployed graduates who left any university in 2009.

The Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE) scheme is aimed at helping graduates by offering them internships with large or small employers in fields including engineering, manufacturing, environment and care.

The university has been funded to pay interns a national minimum wage for about 35 hours per week for six weeks. Interns will also be given employability skills by the university to help them secure more permanent employment.

The project will start in March and will run for a year.

Sam Rhodes, Careers Centre Manager, said: "Graduating from university to an internship rather than a graduate-level job was not the first choice for most graduates but at least by doing an internship they will get the chance to do a short term project requiring graduate-level skills and, hopefully, some of these will lead to full-time employment."

"At the very least it will provide important experience for a CV. Local employers can also benefit by having a skilled graduate on the workforce to do one of those projects that there's never time to do."

Nationally, HEFCE is funding 8,500 internships with 50 universities and, on average, around £1,300 will be provided to support each graduate.