Being in the third year of my degree, I know all too well the struggle and pressure that students about to graduate are put under. In October an atmosphere of expectation descends; an expectation that you must apply for jobs that have high job satisfaction, are well paid, influential, that make your parents proud, and that boost the image of the university you come from.

At 21, this is a lot to ask. There are very few jobs like this that actually exist for graduates, so people like me are forced to look at other options. You are faced with two choices: either forget about a career in an elite profession, or start at the bottom – the very bottom. In real terms, this translates to an unpaid internship.

For graduates from working-class backgrounds an unpaid internship simply is not a viable option. The vast majority of internships are based in London, where sky-high rents and living costs mean that even those on an income struggle to cope.

Adding together the average rent for a room in London (£743), a mothy travel card (upwards of £100), food and other costs, it is estimated than an internship can cost more than £1,000 to fund.

Without a monthly income, graduates must seek financial support elsewhere. For the vast majority of interns, this means turning to their parents. However, this is a luxury reserved for only the richest.

With internships come opportunities in some of the most elite professions in the world. The High Fliers 2016 graduate labour market survey found that nearly half of recruiters would not give those who have little or no work experience a job offer. The same survey found that 32 per cent of new entrants that are recruited by top graduate recruiters come from internship programmes; in banking, this jumps to almost 80 per cent/

With a system that means only those from the richest families have access to these opportunities, we see a trend in which working-class graduates are a tiny minority of those in top professions. Only four per cent of doctors, six per cent of barristers, 11 per cent of journalists and 12 per cent of solicitors have working-class origins, according to recent research by my own university, the London School of Economics using Labour Force Survey data.

The government talks of the advancements made in closing the gap between richest and poorest in terms of university entrance. But it is the opportunities that come after graduating where the social gap widens considerably. Take the class of 2010-11, those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds were 11 per cent less likely to be in professional employment than those from the most advantaged.

This vast inequality in the job market is unfair and unsustainable. So what is to be done? The very simple answer is to ban unpaid internships. A complete ban may seem drastic, but the evidence clearly shows that internships are the key to a career in any elite profession and is therefore the obvious step.

Theresa May has claimed several times that tackling social inequality is one of the priorities of her government, but any sort of significant change cannot be made without opening access to the top jobs in the United Kingdom to those from low-income backgrounds.

The change is not going to come from employers themselves; they currently enjoy recruiting intelligent, motivated graduates to work for free. The change needs to come from the government who are currently failing those from low-economic backgrounds.

Working-class students face adversity in every aspect of their education. Graduating with a degree is supposed to level the playing field between the poorest and the richest, but the widespread use of unpaid internships in the most elite professions are proving to be the highest barrier that students have to face.

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Ciara Hogan is chair of LSE Labour and Co-operative society. She tweets at @CiaraHogan1

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