“University physics and maths departments insist that placement projects are degree-relevant,” says Hall. “Therein lies a huge problem – the project must have a suitably technical element. Those placements with technical elements are usually specific to engineering students. Very few placements are suitable for physematicians.
“Many large engineering firms and multinationals don’t specify particular projects for their student internship intake – instead, they want students to ‘explore’ various aspects of the business. That makes it difficult for physematicians to take up these posts because the job specification is too vague to satisfy universities.
“For the majority of companies this isn’t an issue – they’ll happily take students from other disciplines to complete generic management tasks. Meanwhile, smaller R&D firms find it difficult to fund such placements because they can’t afford the training costs. Surprisingly, SMEs often reject offers from students who’d work for free in order to get commercial skills.”
A survey of Institute of Physics members showed that 93% of companies that recruit physicists employed fewer than 5 members. Only 19 companies in the UK employed over 30 IOP members. Armed with these statistics, it is unsurprising that there is not the capacity to train our young undergraduates in-house, yet without commercial experience such students suffer when applying for industrial jobs.
Hall says the government should pay for young scientists to undertake work placements, which will in turn provide a better awareness of the opportunities after graduation and prepare them to make a more immediate contribution to UK plc.
A PriceWaterhouseCooper survey revealed that physicists pay £40,000 more tax than the average graduate during their working lives.
“If ministers were to earmark just 10 per cent of this extra tax, £20m a year could be put back into guiding students into jobs where they’re needed, assuming 5,000 graduate physematicians a year. This investment could create more than 800 placements a year, covering every student on course for first-class degrees.”
I myself have just graduated and ‘hit the void’ so to speak. The careers advice I received was poor, despite a designated course, with little information on placements, graduate schemes and other job specific details.
I graduated with a 1st class Hons MPhys and want to go into an industry where I can use the leadership skills I gained from extra curricular activities while utilising my degree, not go into a job in the financial industry; if I’d wanted to do that I would’ve done a finance degree, but sadly this is all I am advertised by recruitment agencies such as GRB.
It would be nice to have some form of guidance during the final few weeks of university AFTER exams and perhaps a number of placements, as you discuss, earmarked for physics and mathematics graduates.