In January, UCAS are showing a 7.4% reduction in applicants year on year from 583,546 in January 2011, to 540,073 in January 2012. How will this impact the world of placements and internships?

With 2011-2012 academic year being the last year before the tuition fees kick in, the number of applicants to university was a record high. With this in mind, a 7.4% reduction isn’t too shocking; I am sure a lot of students who were considering a gap year pre-university probably thought better then armed with the knowledge that their tuition fees (and travelling debt!) would treble if they postponed a year.

With this peak in applicants last academic year, it would be logical to assume the number of first-years starting university this year increased with it, and should be safe to assume second years next year will swell too? It did, with 1.4% increase in university acceptances in August 2011 last year rising to 384,649 compared with 379,411 in August 2010. Based on these numbers, I therefore believe that without any market changes there should be an increase in demand for placements and internships for the 2012/2013 academic year, with the year after then being the challenge.

Having said this, from reading through all university Award nominations at the National Placement & Internship Awards 2012, we have seen universities ramping up their focus on employability as the core way of attracting students to universities. Newcastle University are one of many universities accrediting and increasing the accreditation for work-based learning modules, with The University of Birmingham Careers & Employability Centre winning ‘Most Improved Commitment to Employability’ and increasing their team from 30 to 60 over the next couple of years. These universities are not alone in investing heavily in student employability, with all other 60 nominations at the NPIAs citing significant financial and personnel investment.

From an employer perspective, we are seeing more and more companies create and develop placement and internship programmes. The latest graduate research outlined:

“More than a third of new graduate jobs this year will go to students who have already worked for the employer – a record high”

Alongside this research, our client base has doubled year on year advertising 50% more opportunities to students than last year, and the launch of the ‘Best Medium-sized Employer’ Award at the NPIAs was to recognise the growing number of large companies, creating and developing their own schemes. SAP who won ‘Best Medium-sized Employer’ are a prime example of this shift in the market, introducing a scheme for 8 students last year, with this number increasing to 15-18 this summer.

So with more students at university from September onwards, universities increasing their emphasis on employability and more employers offering undergraduate schemes, all arrows are pointing in the same direction: that placements and internships will become an increasing part of a students’ university life.

We are obviously biased being so engrossed in the market, however we believe that even if university applicants do significantly drop in the years ahead, the overall exposure in the market across all stakeholders will ensure that awareness and interest of placements and internships amongst students will counteract this.