This weekend I’m attending the first of four university open days being held over the next few weeks with my younger son. He wants to study Business & Marketing and has shown an entrepreneurial flair from a young age by selling golf balls on his school bus, as well as sweets when they were banned, but I soon put a stop to that. Even his driving instructor became a customer and bought a cricket helmet off him.

He is really keen to do a four year course, with one year spent in industry. This is what my eldest son is doing, and he is currently on a year’s management training placement with Marks & Spencer before going back to uni to do his final year next September. He was one of 40 students selected out of 9,000 graduates and undergraduates who applied, so it was a terrific achievement; in fact, he was the first student ever to be selected from his university.  M & S have devised a structured plan detailing what he will be doing every week of the  year in different departments. On top of this he has to write three academic papers as part of his Economics & Marketing degree course. He is being paid a salary too. It seems very impressive.

James sees the sense in this, and realises that a year’s work placement will boost his confidence and the experience and will give him a much better chance of finding work when he graduates. Yet very few university courses offer this option, and I feel it is something the government should encourage more by providing tax incentives for businesses. These organisations will benefit most at the end of the day by recruiting better skilled graduates who will one day be after those top jobs.