What does the future of academia tell us about our investments?
The Corona Class of 2020 had a strange finish to university. The final months of their course lacked the usual parties and celebrations. Instead, lockdown forced students to move back into their family homes and attempt to write 10,000 words at the same table from where their younger sibling was attending virtual school. But they did it.
On results day LinkedIn was bombarded by smug “I got a first” posts, whereas Instagram offered a few witticisms with images of “Desmond 2:2”. Yet the harsh reality for all graduates is that the world of work just doesn’t want them. Applications to the big graduate names (like Deloitte and Morgan Stanley) are proving futile in an atmosphere of furloughing and redundancies. The graduate’s best bet is a till job at Tesco, but the extensive knowledge of Middle Eastern Haiku’s gained by this year’s group of English grads will do little to help them stand out from the other 425…