A group of York students has won the opportunity to have their very own I-phone application developed after winning The App Challenge final, held at the Ron Cooke Hub on Wednesday, January 18.
YUSU Welfare officer Bob Hughes has warned students to be vigilant after a student loans phishing scam has been revealed.
Her Majesty the Queen will be visiting York on Maundy Thursday, 5th April, as part of the 800th anniversary of York’s Charter for the traditional “Royal Maundy” ceremony.
A flood caused by a heating system “failure” forced the university IT services to shut down many essential systems on Sunday night, causing problems for many students on the eve of their exams and assignment due-dates.
Article written by Anna Goodman
The latest figures released by Unistats.com, the national student survey run and maintained by UCAS, show that 20% of the Linguistics department’s most recent graduates were employed as ‘Sales Assistants and Retail Cashiers’.
This was the most likely employment prospect for the discipline.
A third year Linguist told the Yorker: "It's really surprising that Linguistics is so lowly rated! Although we are Arts students, we are assessed from day one and it's sad to see that our hard work doesn't seem to reflect in the job market."
Other departments were not far behind. Sociology saw 15% of its former students working in the same sector.
Overall, 60% of these departments' graduates are currently holding positions classed as ‘non-graduate’ jobs. Social Policy and Anthropology also hold similar figures.
This is in contrast to other subjects like Politics, History and English, within which only 5-6% of graduates were classed in the retail category.
Traditionally, ‘Science’ degrees, including Engineering and Economics, provide the highest starting salaries. A civil engineer will start on around £22,000 in their first job. 90% of last year’s Engineering and Technology students are currently in ‘graduate’, that is professional, placements.
Charlie Leyland, Academic and Welfare Officer elect, stressed the importance of these statistics in giving “more weight” to YUSU’s ability to investigate problem areas.
She hopes that the recent findings will be able to “illuminate the areas which can be improved”.
She also told The Yorker that she believes that the findings enable YUSU to work with departments in order to improve the career prospects for York students.
Leyland also suggests that other strategies include “careers information and support given from within departments being carefully looked at”. Further possible improvements will include “department specific careers fairs and talks”.
Department and university-specific statistics can be found at www.Unistats.com
Could also be to do with the fact that many science based degrees lend themselves to a particular set of career paths in high demand whereas the choices for arts students are a lot more diffuse but in lower demand (I may well be talking out of my arse here, please correct me if I'm wrong).
No doubt the statistics would look a lot better if they were based on people who'd graduated longer than 1 year ago.
"I may well be talking out of my arse here, please correct me if I'm wrong"
So why say anything at all then? If you're got something worthwhile to contribute, then discussion is great, but if you're just going to make things up...
Seriously, if you're that desperate to see your name on the site then apply to join the Yorker!
The main reason I included that was as a caveat to stop arts students having a go. It's based on my personal impressions not detailed statistics of the job market, so whilst I may be wrong it's not entirely unfounded.
As for the second bit it's not out of desperation, it's out of interest, hopefully the same reason you're here. And anyway... it's too late 
Hmm, not sure about the science leading to more defined careers, Mitch. Certainly true in some cases; we're both computer scientists which has 95% of graduates working in graduate roles after 6 months, but that's mainly because of the huge demand and skills shortage for people with this level of IT/software engineering skills. But other "more general" sciences have a considerably lower amount of people with graduate destinations - Biology only has 40% of people working in graduate roles after 6 months, according to that Unistats site.
comment deleted by a moderator At risk of making me unpopular in certain circles, I think studying sociology deserves little more than a job on a till. The value of good degrees like the sciences, history, english literature and the classics are all being undermined by such 'token' allocations of degrees...
#6: How can you be made unpopular when we don't know who you are. If you want to claim that a sociology degree deserves little more than a job behind a till, why not have the guts to let us associate your name with that view? Just a thought. 
MW makes a fair point. I can't say I'ma massive fan of this 'degree culture'- in other words people being given degrees in ridiculous subject areas. It does undermine the concept of 'reading' for a degree when modules are taken on things like facebook and myspace. I do think however that if you have a problem with this you should say it as yourself and not anonymous. It is a bit spineless...
Dan Taylor
"At risk of making me unpopular in certain circles, I think studying sociology deserves little more than a job on a till....Token allocation degrees"
I think you’re forgetting that sociology is a well established discipline which has been around for many years. I think if anything its degrees like social applied science/ media studies. These are the ‘token’ degrees which you speak of. In response to the research showing that many end up behind a till. I think this simply recognises the stigma which is attached to a subject like Sociology. For some reason there is this belief that it is very easy and is built up of hippy style beliefs. When in actual fact it is a discipline which many of the world leaders rely upon in order to generate votes and establish how society will perceive their current policy reforms.
Nice to see Dan Taylor's views weren't influenced by the Sun newspaper. I’ve never heard of a Myspace or Facebook module. But you can guarantee that the module title doesn’t reflect the subject material it will be built up on contemporary sociological theory and so on.
comment deleted by a moderator And 'anon.' II, have a look at the York sociology modules. I think you will see there is a lot more than 'Sun commentary' behind what I said. It makes you look rather stupid, actually. And man-up and don't post anonymously. It's rather spineless.
This was my point above, and it goes at to all "Anonymous", if you want to participate, at least create a fake name or whatever, but it's just ...not constructive to hidd behind Anonymous.
does anyone at the yorker want to explain why there is an option of submitting things anonymously? is it to encourage debate? i can kind of see the point of the option, however, it makes it so easy to just... hmm. i think in the long run it isn't constructive - i.e. contributing to a coherent debate. on that note, i seem to have moved away from the topic of sociology/job prospect...
/emw (aka ellen-marie winther) 
'More likely' - not certain.
I'm a sociologist and it hasn't been three years of plain sailing. Yet, I've worked hard and got myself a really good job to walk into in 5 weeks time. I got it not just because of my determination, but because of my analytical skills, time management and acute awareness of what is happening around me - all things I learnt because of my degree.
Career prospects don't just happen - you can't expect to do a degree then think of a career. That's not how it works. You need to do a bit more than just your degree to show that you are a better candidate than the next. Most people with non-vocational degrees get jobs based on their input into extra-curricular activities.
Oh, and York doesn't do Civil Engineering, does it? What's the point in including that statistic?
I blame Durkheim. Sociology is completely pointless. Everyone I know who has graduated with a sociology degree is on the dole. You only need BBC to get onto the course anyway.
Pitiful.
The grades needed to get on are irrelevant.
When I starte my degree (Chemistry) the grades required were only BBC.
At the end of the day, if you want a career in your chosen career path, you will seek one out.
I think it's important to remember that many students studying in the social sciences don't stop at a bachelor's degree. Many take a year or two off to work and save for grad school, which is very expensive. Unfortunately, "real" employers don't take kindly to the idea that you'll only be around for a year so they're forced to work in lots of unglamorous positions. If anything, I think it's admirable that despite the high cost to their pocketbook AND ego, they're still willing to pursue the degrees they love. And, despite what some of you have said, Sociology is an incredibly important and relevant discipline whose constituents inform social policy--the kind of stuff that affects us everyday.
MW - The Nature of having a website which serves such a small community means that many people who are particularly interested and informed also hold positions of responsibility which limits what they can say publicly.
I don't doubt that for the most part that's not why people post anonymously...and I don't know who posted earlier, but its something worth bearing in mind....
The most important thing about the internet is the option for anonymity. I am pleased The Yorker respects the culture of the medium it publishes in.
~Anonymous
Nothing about the Internet was ever designed for anonymity - most protocols give trust to the person to say who they claim they are, anonymity grew from people abusing this trust (spam messages, DNS pollution and Identd).
You must log in to submit a comment.
Report