Latest results from the UK Graduate Careers Survey indicate that two thirds of university finalists do not expect to find graduate jobs after finishing their studies. The report (conducted by the student & graduate market research company, High Fliers Research Ltd) shows that only 36% of graduates this year expect to find employment in a graduate position.

Statistics such as these will come as unfortunate news to those students who are already struggling to cope with their studies financially. The prospect of finishing a degree with sizeable debts and little hope of being offered a graduate job is a bleak picture indeed.

The report claims that: "A third of finalists looking for work said that, in the current economic climate, they would have to accept any job they were offered. A sixth admitted that the scarcity of graduate jobs has meant they’ve had to apply to employers that they weren’t really interested in."

This should perhaps be significant news then for Universities secretary, John Denham, who last year announced that universities will be ranked according to the quality of jobs their graduates secure. It would seem that these figures revealing student confidence in the graduate job market ought also to be taken into account when ranking universities

Latest figures from the University of Southampton show that 4% of graduates remain ‘unemployed’ 6 months after finishing university, which is below the national average of 5%. Such figures still beg the question however, that if completing a costly degree programme does not guarantee one’s employment in a graduate position, and leaves 5% without even part-time employment, then is having a university education all it’s cracked up to be? Indeed, the studies saw one in seven finalists claim that had they known how tough the graduate job market was going to be they would not have come to university.

The report also indicates how various industries have been affected by the recession in terms of the number of graduates making applications for employment. Applications to investment banks (the second most popular destination for graduates in 2008) have fallen by a third this year, with teaching having now been named as the top destination for graduates for the first time since the survey began in 1995.

Clearly, the advice to 2009 finalists must be to take full advantage of the careers services at their university. In this difficult economic climate it is painfully clear that the recession is not just taking prisoners within the retail sector, but is also significantly limiting and damaging the prospects of UK graduates.