Graduate jobs - why are starting salaries so low?

This is just plain wrong.

Every commercial business is there to make money. People are renumerated in relation to their (sometimes perceived) contribution to the business making money. A new graduate is usually an investment, as they usually do not contribute much if any to revenues but in fact cost the company more in training. As the graduate gains more experience and thus contributes more to the business making money - they are then paid more.

£25k+ is relatively generous on this basis.

Possibly - though the salary distribution doesn't need to be normal... maybe the grad recruiters are watching eachother and making offers clustered very tightly about the established norm... since graduates are pretty commoditised in the main why pay 2-4k over the odds unless you're trying to deprive your competitors of the ultra talented hyper elite mentioned before, in which case it'd be worth really pushing the boat out.

I disagree. Your point may have been valid 50 years ago but these days every man and his dog has a degree. Having one just makes a person average, and certainly doesn't mean they "deserve" anything. To be worthy of a well paid job, a graduate would have to demonstrate that they can offer much more than a piece of paper that half the country can easily obtain by getting drunk every night for three years.

Find a stat of the numbers who go to respected universities, do academic degrees and have at least 320 UCAS points. It won't be as high as you believe...anyhow, students have been drinking for some years, it's kind of 'the British student culture'

Your post made no mention of restricting your statement to elite academics; you referred only to having a degree, which could easily have included BA Sandwich-making from the University of Dumpsville. If you want to limit the discussion to graduates of prestigious universities then I partly agree with you, although the degree is still only a foot in the door to the interview room. Even a Cambridge Mathematician will still need to work hard to land a good job

Has anybody got some information on what the big technology companies pay as a starting salary for graduates? Such as IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, HP etc?

A way to sort the graduate market out is to look to the past, pre-1992 and see it won't take long to see what the problem is.

Well it's the exact opposite with some of these ex-poly grads, they're able to get past filters, land interviews and jobs without actually having had to work hard.

Well traditionally, even people with BBB could go to universities like Reading. I don't think it's elitism to make 'new' unis more specialised and perhaps remove the 'uni' title and put them in a different bracket or something. People who have decided to work hard throughout their a-levels have been penalised by the new sway of universities. A way to sort the graduate market out is to look to the past, pre-1992 and see it won't take long to see what the problem is.

Anyhow, most grad schemes are elitist, other than maybe 10 and the govt. schemes, you need at least 300, and when you start lurking below the 320 UCAS point mark, your academic advantage starts to diminish. It's just my view that hard work should be rewarded and nothing should come for free. Well it's the exact opposite with some of these ex-poly grads, they're able to get past filters, land interviews and jobs without actually having had to work hard. And I don't mean just your UCLs etc. All, the pre-92 unis tend to fair better, however there are a some admittedly which are still seen as a bit iffy. Like Salford.

If 'new' universities have the same standing as traditional universities, with their low entry requirements, it could defeat the whole purpose of trying your best to get into traditional ones.

The answer is quite simple, the flooding of the market with graduates has resulted in the academic entry requirements for roles increasing also. Yet the value of the role to the organisation has not increased, in fact with the commoditisation of the IT sector the reverse has happened, these two factors can then be overlayed by off-shore delivery, whether near-shore or far-shore.

The final factor is that we have not had a significant technology wave for years, the rise of Unix over 370 architecture placed a massive premium on Unix skills and 30K within a few years of graduation was easy, and I am talking well over 15 to 20 years ago, same with AS400. Client server did the same, as did RDBMS over hierarchical, and 4 GL languages, as did the emergence of NT and 95, as did object oriented programming, as did the initial rise of SAP and Oracle ERPs, SAP consultants a few years out of Uni could write their own cheque. All of these enhanced the value of roles to the organisation. Cloud does not seem to have the same effect, it generates good income for a few specialists, but the whole point is low cost delivery using cheap resources. It was not that long ago when at bid review we would not pursue a systems development project that was less than 3 million, not worth getting out of bed for so to speak, in the last 5 years anything over a million gets everyone very excited and bidding on 500K to 1 million projects is business as usual now. Global service contracts, I ran one across Europe and was pulling on average 38 million a year ( Peak 42 M) revenue at good margins, 10 years ago. The last bid I was involved in was a global deal of similar size, with more languages to support in the user support component, winning price.....< 20 million for the full 5 years......majority of the delivery from India so that the price could be met with a contract profit margin that supported the organisation profit margin.

There are still a few mega deals about but no where near as many as there used to be.

I started with A levels on £4,140 p.a. and excellent value I was
Always wonder what would have happened if I had stuck to the gap year (I blagged getting a job as a Trainee Computer Programmer) intention and actually gone to QMUL to do Nuclear Engineering, that sector has been rather weak over the same 30 year period lol.

If its just wrong then why do seemingly successful companies, IBM, Accenture, Deloitte, PWC, E&Y pay well over 25k - often into the low 30s for new starters? Even 'fast moving consumer goods' companies pay £27k+ as does the Civil Service with a defined benefit pension on top.

And thats excluding any bonus and not even mentioning the banks.

About 20 years ago my uncle went to Sussex and studied history and politics and landed a big job with SAP as some kind of consultant, that involved some travelling, presentations etc. Was that common back then? Are SAP still a major player in the UK now? From what I've seen, most of their operations are conducted in Germany.

I remember having the same conversation with my colleagues in our first year there, with a couple whinging that £28k in London was not enough, and after a long debate we did actually come up with the fact that at the time, we didnt really contribute a hell of a lot to warrant the salary in the first place.

In fact most big accountancy firms make a loss on their graduates. That starting salary is generally an overestimation of your worth at the time (although of course they're hoping to make it back with time).

Has anybody got some information on what the big technology companies pay as a starting salary for graduates? Such as IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, HP etc?

Well traditionally, even people with BBB could go to universities like Reading. I don't think it's elitism to make 'new' unis more specialised and perhaps remove the 'uni' title and put them in a different bracket or something. People who have decided to work hard throughout their a-levels have been penalised by the new sway of universities. A way to sort the graduate market out is to look to the past, pre-1992 and see it won't take long to see what the problem is.

Anyhow, most grad schemes are elitist, other than maybe 10 and the govt. schemes, you need at least 300, and when you start lurking below the 320 UCAS point mark, your academic advantage starts to diminish. It's just my view that hard work should be rewarded and nothing should come for free. Well it's the exact opposite with some of these ex-poly grads, they're able to get past filters, land interviews and jobs without actually having had to work hard. And I don't mean just your UCLs etc. All, the pre-92 unis tend to fair better, however there are a some admittedly which are still seen as a bit iffy. Like Salford.

If 'new' universities have the same standing as traditional universities, with their low entry requirements, it could defeat the whole purpose of trying your best to get into traditional ones.

I'm starting at one of those for £31k base. That might be a little inflated, because I'm fairly sure they were matching another offer I had told them about. Certainly, both were significantly more than I expected. It's also worth remembering that the big players will usually have fairly comprehensive benefits packages (health, stock, transport) and/or performance-linked incentives which could represent several thousand pounds' additional value... if they're of use to you, of course!