The typical Manchester scene can be seen if you stroll down Oxford Road on a weekday afternoon. There is a line forming outside the kebab van that has managed to outlast three vice-chancellors, students slicing across the pavement with tote bags and earphones, and the old red-brick buildings holding their ground against the glass towers creeping up behind them. It’s a familiar image. What those students actually do during their three or four years here is going to change if Duncan Ivison gets his way.
This week, Ivison, who has been in charge of the University of Manchester for just over a year, declared that all 32,000 undergraduates would be given the opportunity to gain some sort of practical work experience prior to graduation. An internship, a live project with a business, a placement, something. The classicists, too. The philosophers, too. Maybe the philosophers in particular.
It’s an eye-catching promise that universities have been debating for years without fully committing to. It is already done by the vocational courses. Hospitals employ nurses. Teachers in training enter classrooms. But a placement for a history student? At least for a Russell Group organization this size, that’s new ground.
Reading Ivison’s interviews gives the impression that he is aware of the situation he is entering. Graduates are ending up behind tills in Pret with debts exceeding fifty thousand pounds. AI is subtly eliminating the entry-level positions that once attracted recent college graduates, as well as the analyst and junior copywriter positions that taught a generation how to truly work. “People are asking questions about the fundamental value proposition of universities in a way that I have never seen before,” he said to the BBC. That is not the language of a man who is confident in his field.
It is another matter entirely whether the plan succeeds. After praising it as brilliant, Nick Hillman of the Higher Education Policy Institute pointed out the obvious issue right away. Thirty-two thousand pupils. How many employers are required for that? How can you prevent the entire situation from devolving into a bureaucratic nightmare where half of the placements are merely administrative duties at businesses that agreed out of courtesy? Additionally, Hillman brought up a point that is frequently overlooked in these announcements: the majority of students are already employed. They work shifts at Deliveroo, pull pints, and stack shelves at Aldi. A week has a limited number of hours.
The ambition is important, though. This has been a part of Aston’s and Loughborough’s character for decades. But an open commitment to employability from a Russell Group university, which has historically viewed it as a somewhat grubby issue beneath its academic mission? That change is noteworthy.
Ivison’s claim that Manchester was the birthplace of the industrial revolution is the kind of statement that could come across as workshopped in a marketing meeting. However, there is a component to it. The geography is plausible due to the city’s high employment density, which includes biomedical campuses, law firms, and BBC Salford. Edinburgh or Glasgow might find it difficult to compete. It was undoubtedly too expensive for London to match.
The fact that this is also a defensive move is something that no one is publicly stating. The old adage that “study hard for three years and a good job follows” isn’t holding true, and universities are under financial strain that hasn’t really reached the public yet. Ivison’s strategy aims to give that promise some substance.
Manchester will spend the next ten years attempting to determine whether thirty thousand students can truly be matched with meaningful work, year after year, without the entire system collapsing under its own weight. It’s difficult not to wish them luck.
