You might think that being responsible for processing all university applications would be a huge job? Not for UCAS who also have:

• UCAS Card, a loyalty marketing scheme which has about 150,000 members
• You Can magazine, published in conjunction with The Independent newspaper
• UCAS Events, which holds 60 conventions and events in conjunction with Connexions and the Higher Education Liaison Officers Association (HELOA)
• Yougofurther.com, a social networking website.

This portfolio of commercial activity falls under the remit of UCAS Media, UCAS’s income-producing subsidiary. Yougofurther.com is seen as more than somewhere for current and prospective students to swap stories, it will also allow users to upload portfolios of content which can be shown to prospective employers. Employers can browse the material developed by prospective employees within a section of the site called Exposure (we suspect very few will). There is also content from partners like Freewire (free IP telephony), Moneysaving Expert (finance) and Doctorjob (graduate careers) as well as partnerships with Lonely Planet (gap year travel), Cult Clothing (fashion), Apple, fopp and iTunes.

A quick browse around the public areas of the site shows communication skills which, while very tech-savvy, would send shivers down the spines of most employers. Take Becci, responding to the question posed in the Finance Forum, headed ‘Has ne1 saved for uni??’ Her response – ‘I mite tyr an save a lil in the hols so I will av sum for freshers week’.

This may show a mastery of texting but is not a great display of her grasp of English, nor the communication skills that will lead to any meaningful employment. Later posts, about the financial strictures of student life, were equally illuminating, with one student saying he was broke after ‘investing’ £9k on his music system, another was ‘skint..leeds festival tickets wiped me out’. Susi from De Montfort University was moaning for her whole coddled generation when she wrote, ‘no I am unable to save. I just cant do it, its so hard’. Oh dear, after all the investment made in trying to promote financial literacy in schools.