Nicholas Dunn-McAfee writes for the University of York’s York Vision on the dilemma of unpaid internships:

Nick Clegg laconically declared at the launch of the government’s Social Mobility Strategy in April 2011 “When a child is born, they shouldn’t be condemned by the circumstances of their birth.” His ethical musings continue in a similar manner: “It’s just not right that in Britain today where you’re born, who your parents are, how much they earn, what job they do has a much bigger influence on what you then achieve later in life than any other equivalent country.”

Clegg’s rhetoric is not as baseless and scaremongering as you might expect. In a 2010 economic growth report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) entitled “A Family Affair: Intergeneration Social Mobility” the investigation found; “In southern European countries, the United Kingdom and Finland, having a father with tertiary education raises a son’s wages by at least 20% or more, compared with a son whose father had upper secondary education.”

This same interim report however did find one glimmer of hope for social mobility in this country; it concluded that education was the greatest means of social mobility. Even with headlines such as “Priced out of university by soaring fees” (Daily Mail: 31st January 2012), “Philanthropy steps in as the state retreats” (Guardian: 13th July 2012) and “Tuition fee hike ‘puts 15,000 teenagers off university’” (The Telegraph: 9th August 2012) the truth about higher education still stands…

Full article here.