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STUDENT AND GRADUATE DISCRIMINATION ON THE INCREASE

By Will Linnegar ⋅ April 12, 2008 ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

A recent report conducted by the UK’s top website for graduate recruitment, milkround.com has uncovered a worrying rise in work place discrimination aimed at students and recent graduates with ethnicity at its core.

These worrying results revealed a shocking 86 percent of students and graduates questioned felt they had faced discrimination, up from 81 percent from last years survey. Ethnicity was again singled out as the root of the majority of discrimination issues for the second year, however it has fallen from affecting nearly half of students and graduates (49 percent) to two in five (40 percent). The next highest form of discrimination towards respondents was age on 14 percent followed by gender (12 percent) with disability, religion and sexual orientation on five percent each.

The survey also encountered other forms of discrimination varying from height and social class through to mental illness. One student interviewed said: “People like me coming from a different country or continent to study and then try to get a work placement here are very vulnerable, particularly if they are unfortunate enough to have employers or managers as ignorant as the one I got. I think people like me should be more prepared about what to do if they see that they are not being treated fairly.” When asked if workplace discrimination is getting worse, a worrying three quarters said it was.

The report highlights the need for more support for students and graduates in the workplace, something which is likely to be discussed by student unions and universities in the near future.