ifutures: A New Start-Up Aims to Support Students Through University Life & Beyond
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As students face increasing pressures and insecurities regarding future careers, Patrick Fullick, a former academic at the University of Southampton, founded the education start-up ifutures (“inferential futures”) in March 2019.
University is an opportunity for students to explore their interests–and ultimately is an investment in their futures, albeit an expensive one. But often the future of each individual student is not a clear-cut path. In recent years, the current job market has become extremely competitive. According to High Fliers Research Limited’s 2024 report on the current UK graduate market, “There has been a surge in the number of applications to employers this year, with three-fifths of recruiters reporting a rise in applicants.” Moreover, “applications for graduate vacancies have increased by 27% year-on-year.”
“Leveraging my thirty years of research into online social communities for young people, I started ifutures out of my desire to help students find their way through university and into a career,” Fullick said. Active across the UK and on an international level, ifutures provides a platform that helps university students make new connections for their future life and career choices. Pi Media spoke to some careers ambassadors for ifutures who study at UCL to learn more about why students should make use of the platform.
Silver, who studies Computer Science, said that the best thing about ifutures is that “it’s run by students, for students, and is centred around students’ needs.” He explains that “typical and conventional careers services offered by universities aren’t always available because of a backlog. Even when you can set up a meeting, there’s limited time.”
The UCL Careers Service, for example, is under strain and urgently requires more funding to deal with capacity requests. But at the same time, many students do not make full use of the careers services on offer. ifutures aims to counter this by “[providing] a platform that is always available to students to answer any of their needs.”
For Civil Engineer student Safwan, ifutures is “a platform that is designed for university students to help each other, seek help, and explore employment options, internships, opportunities and guidance.” He also works as an engineering careers ambassador for ifutures, in which he “creates content about different technologies, techniques in engineering, and career paths for engineering fields.”
Biochemistry student Julia, who is new to the team, adds that she likes that the platform can be “tailored to each student’s specific issue/ query,” and that she “personally [feels] more comfortable talking to other students who are in the same position.”
Looking towards the future of the company, Safwan plans to “post tips about placement opportunities, assessments, interviews, and more.” More generally, Silver adds that ifutures is “actively working to bring employers from different industries on the platform.”
The question of how students reach out to employers and the best way of maintaining that relationship remains ever more pertinent. ifutures aims to promote a community environment and make use of more peer-to-peer efforts instead of conventional career services.
Fundamentally, ifutures’s goal is to help students to support each other. As Safwan summarises, the “idea is to have a university community around the UK that can help each other, have each other’s backs.”
For any UCL students looking to make use of ifutures, the platform is easily accessible: there’s a general search bar where you can have a look for subject specific questions, and it’s free for students to use, without any advertising.