Undergraduates' Industry Placements Stall As Economy Nose-Dives

The economic downturn has hit student job placement programmes at Northern Ireland's universities.

Just days after industry leaders from across the property market met at the University of Ulster to examine how best to meet expected future demands in the housing market, the institution has admitted that it will now have to allow some students to skip industry placements - because many businesses cannot take on students in the recession.

Queen's University has also said it was "prepared to be more flexible about how students complete work placements".

Normally, such a work placement is an essential part of getting their final degree.

At the University of Ulster, if students have tried hard but failed to find a placement for September, they will be allowed to skip that requirement and go into their final year of study instead.

Queen's said it too believes there will be fewer placements on offer and said it would take a flexible approach.

Damien McGivern, Head of the Careers Development Centre at the University of Ulster told the BBC that students looking for a placement in the construction industry are finding it particularly tough.

"Students maybe have to look a bit more broadly for opportunities locally, nationally and even internationally," he added.

The news is at odds with last week's more upbeat message from the seminar held by the University of Ulster's property think tank, the Real Estate Initiative.

Amid hopes of an end to falling resale prices by year-end and signs of new-build buoyancy, senior figures in the banking, surveying, valuation, property sales, construction and development worlds discussed ways to stimulate the sector at the seminar.

Professor Alastair Adair, Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Property Investment at Ulster said: "The event provided a launch-pad opportunity for key industry leaders from the property and financial sectors to work together and to take a pro-active stance in moving the industry forward in support of the entire sector, to get people back to work, and to bring a much needed boost to the local economy."

The seminar heard that the global economic downturn and its ramifications has thrown up challenges for the property experts in valuing properties.

Delegates discussed how, in the new-build sector, a steady increase in transactions reported in the first quarter of 2009 has provided fresh comparative data which has helped valuers and will assist the task of achieving price stability.

"These emerging trends predict that prices will start to consolidate over the rest of 2009, particularly in the resale market, to match what we are already seeing in the new build market," continued the professor.

"A greater availability of appropriate finance products for the first time buyer market would assist the consolidation of prices in the resale market and further support the normalisation of the housing market," he said, more positively.

(BMcC/JM)