University of Manchester to offer work placements to all undergraduate students

The University of Manchester has announced plans to promise work placements for all undergraduate students, regardless of subject, in an effort to prepare them more effectively for employment after graduation.

Manchester’s vice-chancellor Duncan Ivision said no student should graduate having done three years of just academic study.

Instead, “every single student [should] have a chance to put their learning into context – an internship, a placement, a joint project or exchange,” he told the Times. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a history student or a chemical engineer.”

The move comes as many graduates face increasing difficulty securing work after university, often leaving with significant student debt.

Those who do get work are often in low-paid roles in hospitality or retail sectors rather than traditional graduate jobs.

Nick Hillman, the director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, welcomed the initiative but raised feasibility concerns, with 32,000 undergraduates enrolled at Manchester.

“This is a brilliant initiative in the sense that it seeks to tackle the widespread fear that older universities provide an overly academic education,” he said.

“It also recognises the fact that the main reason people attend higher education is to find a fulfilling career afterwards.”

However, he added: “It is very difficult to do this sort of thing at scale because of the number of students and employers involved – Manchester is a huge university.”

Hillman also pointed out that most students already do paid, often unskilled work alongside their studies because of rising living costs. “There are only so many hours in the day to fit in work experience alongside.”

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He noted that universities such as Aston and Loughborough had long integrated employability into their courses because of their origins as colleges of advanced technology. Others, particularly former teacher training colleges, were similarly built around workplace learning.

“However, I have not come across a Russell Group university doing anything on this scale before.”

Undergraduates training for professions such as teaching or medicine are already required to do work placements.

According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, in 2024-25 almost a quarter of undergraduate courses gave students the option of a placement of at least a year.

Vivienne Stern, the chief executive of Universities UK, welcomed the initiative. “Universities have an important role to play in making sure that students are set up for the world of work and are taking innovative and new approaches to this,” she said.

The University of Manchester has said: “We want every student to have the opportunity to apply what they are learning before they graduate.”

“The aim is to make those opportunities a normal part of university life, not something students have to find separately or access through personal contacts.”

“This approach is designed to work across all disciplines, not just traditionally vocational subjects, and reflects Manchester’s strong links to employers and organisations across the city region.”

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