Who gets the best jobs

I've just been sent a link to a programme that was on BBC 2 last night - Who Gets the Best Jobs? (Broadcast on BBC Two, 9:00 PM Wed, 2 Feb 2011 available until 1:09AM Wed, 16 Feb 2011). I was aware of Alan Milburn's Unleashing Aspiration report but this programme makes it much more of a prominent issue (and only last week was Andrew Neil's programme Posh and Posher: Why Public School Boys Run Britain).

Here's the blurb on the programme from the iPlayer.

Britain is a less equal society than at any time since World War One. In Who Gets the Best Jobs, Richard Bilton investigates access to the professions - and finds that the best jobs are being snapped up by an increasingly small gene pool of privileged, well-connected families.

Getting a good degree matters more than ever - and those from low income families can no longer easily work their way up from the bottom without the qualifications, contacts and social skills that their more fortunate counterparts make full use of.

One of the University of Leicester's stated values is having an inclusive and accessible culture, specifically

Our commitment to an inclusive and accessible culture not only opens the doors to the very best, no matter their background, it even shapes the very way we look at and discover the world around us.

Leicester is the most inclusive of Britain's top-20 leading universities with the greatest proportions of students from under-represented groups.

So whilst the programme is more than a little depressing, our task is to think about how our inclusive and accessible culture can contribute to fairer access and who gets the best jobs. Not least given this comment by Dr Lee Elliott Major (presumably he uses the middle name so not to be confused with Lee Majors) from The Sutton Trust (confirming what we already knew):

We know that many of the big companies or big recruiters have increasingly small lists of universities from whom they pick ... there are some signs that in the current recession that recruiters are actually shortening their lists. So for this particular generation coming out of university now it's an even bigger issue.

So, what to do. Any suggestions?

Emerged technologies

Last Friday Marta and I went to the Association of Learning Development in Higher Education's CPD event in Leeds and ran a workshop on 'Using emerging technologies to engage students'. It was essentially a repeat of the Engaging without invading workshop that I did in March last year but a little bit updated.

The thing that was most interesting for me was the change in attitude of the audience from 10 months ago. It was a different audience but one drawn from the same professional group., the majority attitude last time had been 'I'm really not sure about this - convince me'; this time it was 'We really should be using this - how?' Also of note was an interest in using social media for learning as well as simply publicising (I need to get involved in Alan's Friendfeed project again).

I made the comment in the workshop that I wasn't sure how long we can continue to call these 'emerging technologies'. The feedback on the session was very positive but the one comment that jumped out was the one that said 'This wasn't a workshop on using emerging technologies it was a workshop on using Facebook and Twitter'. A lot changes in 10 months!

Using emerging technology to engage students

View more presentations from Stuart Johnson.

AGCAS Heads of Service conference

I've just got back from the AGCAS Heads of Service conference at Conference Aston. This was my first time at the conference and I was there in my acting up capacity. As is usually the case with conferences, the best part was meeting people - especially to share ideas and compare experiences. I felt particularly welcomed by the East Midlands Heads of Service (we were trying to think of an appropriate collective noun for ourselves but didn't). Also, it was good to find people on Twitter, especially in meeting Michael Clarke from London for the first time (he was the other person at the conference tweeting!), Stephen McAuliffe (he looks very  smart on his Twitter pic) from Nottingham, and Jon Christie from Falmouth.

The common themes of the conference were around demonstrating impact of activity, strategic positioning of careers within institutions (especially post Browne), and doing more with less. The institutions that seem to be making most headway are those where both opportunities to influence strategy are grasped and senior management are supportive.

Being relatively new to things careers I found the conference very helpful and colleagues very supportive. Whether I go next year depends on what happens to my acting up...

And, what post conference blog would be complete without a wordle of the tweet hashtag #agcas11 (thanks twitter archive and Wordle).

Study and Communication Skills for the Chemical Sciences

A nice way to start the new year; the book I co-authored with Tina Overton and Jon Scott has just been published. Available in all good book shops (or Amazon)...

We got a lovely certificate

Look what came in the post today