It will take more than the hair-of-the-dog or a few beroccas for today’s university students to shake off the financial hangover left from university.
A hangover that will last 12 years for today’s Millennials according to research recently released by Aviva.
As the next round of university arrivals ready themselves for the onslaught of Freshers Week, in which ten percent will blow their entire loan (£2,700), top businesses will be thinking of new ways to bid for the brightest graduates.
Flexibility, ethical work, fast career progression and travel have been cited as prominent factors among the emerging generation which, according to Deloitte, will make up 75% of the workforce by 2025, but is there a far bigger incentive we’ve overlooked?
In a new move by a select number of US businesses — where student university debts carry a weightier toll — businesses are using the burden of student debt to entice talent.
Being saddled with over £45,000 of debt is often the primary concern for the majority of graduates both sides of the pond and with rising tuition fees this side of the Atlantic, UK businesses could soon follow suit behind their American counterparts.
Among the first wave of businesses to offer student loan assistance as a benefit was the US branch of PwC, who see it as:
“A band-aid to the fact that tuition costs have doubled in the last decade.”
Some companies even consider it a more attractive incentive than retirement packages or health insurance which is why they’ve been replacing lifetime nest eggs with loan repayments.
The US market has always placed private medical insurance and a pension plan among the weightiest of benefits, yet more and more Millennials are opening their ears to companies that promise to alleviate the financial struggle of post-student life.
According to the Society of Human Resource Management, only 4% of companies in the US are offering this cutting edge attraction, up 1% on 2015. However, with rising tuition and economic concerns becoming more prominent it’s likely to become a far more common attraction.
via Sonovate (www.sonovate.com)
