Careers changes

Peter Knight's work on employability has the sound of calm common sense about it ("Take Cardinal Newman approach, lecturers told", September 10). But there is one assertion - that "most employers are fairly happy to take any graduate and train them" - that I doubt.

True, large employers tend to say they accept graduates of any discipline, but the response might be different in small firms. When small employers register vacancies, they are far more likely to specify a discipline and they tend to recruit in single figures, but collectively these numbers represent a big slice of the graduate market.

Even in the world of the big graduate recruiter there are rumblings about the possible demise of the "graduate training programme". If that were to happen, it might precipitate a stronger interest in the vocational graduate among some firms.

Terry Jones
Communications coordinator
Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services