And yet if graduates DON'T work they will still deteriorate and fail to build up a work history. They need to get over the idea that low-paying, non-enjoyable jobs are beneath them. A job is a job. One does it to the best of one's ability and sticks it out. I did that in low-paying jobs far beneath my educational level for years before finally landing something better. I eventually got the better job because I was able to show a strong work history and provide good references.

Now I am responsible for hiring. I can tell you for a fact that when I hire I look carefully at work history. I'm quite willing to hire applicants with a history of low-status jobs. What I WON'T hire is people with little or no work experience or people with a history of flitting from job to job every few months. Decent jobs are likeliest to go to those who have shown they can stick to it in the tough times.

D.L. Anderson, Crossett, AR/U.S.A.

This government creates far too many university places for young people when there are not enough jobs in the economy to satisfy graduate demand.

Nigel Ford, Eastbourne,

"The latest figures show that 20 per cent of graduates are in nongraduate jobs"

I think that figure is well out. Far more than 20% of my daughters friends and colleagues are working in non graduate jobs. In Liverpool that figure is more like 60%. I wouldn't have thought that 248 kids in the midlands was representative. Let's have some statistics from the north. I also see that they fail to mention how many jobs these 'underemployed' kids have applied for while doing their boring mundane work and how many rejections they receive. The final statement in this piece of writing says it all and sums up the Government's policy on higher education, "Most of the underemployed graduates had given up the idea that they were going to get into the sort of jobs their education predicted they should get into". An awful lot of them don't, they remain in low paid employment and in thousands of pounds of debt, no wonder they're distresssed. It's disgusting and immoral.

judy, Liverpool, England

This precisely describes my own experience. After graduating with a First and a Distinction in my Masters, I was foolish enough to take a mechanically tedious stop-gap office job on minimum wage. My applications for accountancy jobs slowed to a trickle and I ended up on anti-depressants. Over a year after finishing university I still had no career prospects. It is now extremely difficult to justify myself to interviewers - if I were worth employing, why wouldn't I have been employed by now already? Stay on the dole - and if they begin complaining that you should be seeking to get off benefits with any old job, ignore them for as long as legally possible.

Liam, Stoke, UK