The View from HECSU

Opportunity for universities to boost regional economies

noreply@blogger.com (HECSU) — Mon, 16 Jan 2017 15:17:00 +0000

On 8 December 2016 I attended the Westminster Higher Education Forum Keynote Seminar on 'Universities in their local economies: devolution, skills development and supporting entrepreneurship'.

Within the context of the deepening devolution debate, proposed reforms to the Higher Education and Research Bill, the introduction of a new regulatory framework - the Teaching Excellence Framework - and Britain’s exit from the EU, there will be a lot of change in the HE sector over the coming years. A central point of discussion at the seminar was how universities and local authorities can work together to develop regional economies; Kevin Richardson, local growth consultant with the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), focused on this area.

Westminster Policy Forum Seminar at Manchester Town Hall

As it stands the UK is at a critical point when it comes to productivity. Levels of business investment in research and development are notably low, particularly in comparison to competitors in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Inter-regional economies are also radically different and there are huge disparities in average incomes - for example, Manchester South West is nearly 19% richer than Manchester Central (and both are lower than the national average).

With cuts to local authority budgets, universities are often the most successful business in any given region - indeed, HEFCE predicts that over this current four-year period universities will invest nearly £18billion in capital (mostly on infrastructure). As a result, we can see a top-down policy push encouraging institutions to get involved in local initiatives, such as Enterprise Partnerships, University Technical Colleges and Degree Level Apprenticeships.

There has been a move towards risk-based finance, where one can make use of the finance offered to you on the basis that you deliver the agreed outputs, but if you fail to do so you pay the financer back in full. If universities have a good project, the ability to deliver and evidence of demand, there is an assortment of capital finance initiatives available. For example, a university received an investment of £75million from a pension fund, another received £15million to build a new engineering centre and another received more than £30million from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

The government intends that by 2020 local authorities will retain 100% of business rates collected in their area (taxes raised locally). Therefore universities should focus on the decentralisation of finance, as we can assume that these financial opportunities will only grow.

Written by Ellen Logan, Higher Education Services Executive for Prospects/HECSU

Queen's University Belfast : PhD Study to Employment: Experiences of Transition

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Mon, 09 May 2016 15:29:00 +0000

HECSU's Research Fund is open for applications until the end of May. HECSU members can apply for funding to conduct research into careers and employability topics and successful applicants will receive funding in the summer.

We have been talking to researchers who were funded this year about the work they are doing so that potential applicants can see the opportunities - and challenges! - HECSU research funding can offer.

Today's update comes from Rebecca Boyd of Queen's University Belfast. Rebecca is the only one of our current researchers to focus solely on postgraduates and her work looks at how PhD graduates experience the transition from study to employment.

Working as a careers consultant specifically with Postgraduate Research students, our project aims to increase understanding of experiences of transition from PhD study to employment. Review of the current literature identified that although numerous studies have looked at the transition of graduates, there is limited information available on the experiences of doctoral graduates. Where studies have looked at doctoral graduate employment, these have tended to be large-scale quantitative studies providing overviews of destinations and impact.

To address this gap, we have taken a qualitative approach, aiming to provide an in-depth exploration of early transition experiences. 12 semi-structured interviews have been conducted with a targeted sample of PhD graduates across disciplines, working in a range of roles (both within and mainly beyond academia).

The HECSU funding has supported us to employ a part-time Research Assistant, who is also a current PhD student. Recruitment of both our Research Assistant and the participants required investment of time at the early stages of the project which I feel has definitely been worthwhile as our Research Assistant is excellent and our diverse range of participants have made really interesting contributions to the project. Data transcription is complete and we are currently in the process of thematic analysis.

A key objective of the project is to raise awareness of the transition from PhD study by disseminating findings within and beyond the university context. As well as a research report we will be producing a series of case studies, including several video case studies which should be of interest to current and prospective PhD students, HECSU members, careers professionals and employers. As an Occupational Psychologist, I am also keen to disseminate our findings more widely through potential publication and conference presentation.

Liverpool John Moores - How does the type of careers education and guidance which our students have received in a school or college setting affect their career readiness once they arrive at university?

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Mon, 25 Apr 2016 12:11:00 +0000

HECSU's Research Fund is open for applications until the end of May. HECSU members can apply for funding to conduct research into careers and employability topics and successful applicants will receive funding in the summer We have been talking to researchers who were funded this year about the work they are doing so that potential applicants can see the opportunities - and challenges! - HECSU research funding can offer.

This week’s update comes from Laura Aldridge from Liverpool John Moores University.

I have always been interested in how young peoples’ early experience of careers education and guidance affects how they respond to the careers input which they receive later on, in a Higher Education setting. This interest stems from the first part of my career which was spent working as a careers adviser in a school and college setting. Once I moved into a HE setting and I encountered first year students who were struggling with career-related decisions, I was left wondering about when this uncertainty had started. Clearly many factors can affect our students’ decision making. However, I also started to wonder what type of careers support these students had received prior to coming to university and whether this could also contribute to how ready they felt to make career decisions at a later point.

My proposal

This is what led to my idea to put in a bid for some funding from HECSU to investigate the above topic. I proposed a research project which will investigate how the fragmentation of careers education and guidance offered to young people has affected the level of ‘career readiness’ of our students when they arrive at university. I was pleased to find out that this bid was successful and to have the chance to investigate a topic which has been of long held interest to me. I also feel that the project has fused two aspects of my own career together, as my past background of working with young people aged 11-18 informed the way I approached the research which centred on our current students.

What I have learnt about conducting research so far

I have carried out quantitative research by distributing 343 questionnaires to students and am now analysing the data extracted from these questionnaires. I am now undertaking the qualitative stage of my research which involves interviewing a sample of first year students. In addition to this, I am carrying out interviews with career practitioners, who are working in a school or college setting.

This experience has been an ‘eye opener’ in teaching me a lot more about the actual process of conducting research. I had no idea that the process of gaining ethical approval for a research study was so lengthy and under-estimated the time that this would take. However, once I started my research, the amount of access which my work gives me to first year students (through group sessions and one to one interviews) gave me plenty of opportunities to gain quantitative data, from the students.

The process of encouraging students to participate in an interview is slightly more of challenge – perhaps because I am asking students to commit to a longer time slot. However, I have enjoyed carrying out those interviews which I have conducted. It has been really interesting to hear about our students’ journey and how they have made career decisions so far. As other researchers have reported, I have found it interesting to carry out an interview in the role of a researcher rather than a careers adviser. I have had to remember that my role is to gather data for the research project and not to give careers guidance.

I have also done quite a lot of background research into current developments in government policy which have affected the careers guidance which young people receive in schools and college. As it is a few years since I have worked in schools and colleges, this has updated my knowledge of the political landscape which careers practitioners who work in this sector- are now operating in. This has given me a lot of contextual understanding which is helpful not only for my research project but for the role which I am currently working in.

On the other hand, my past background of working in a school setting, has given me an extra level of empathy for the challenges which schools careers advisers face. This has been helpful when conducting interviews with these practitioners as I have some awareness of the challenges which those working in this sphere may face. This has helped me to phrase my questions for these interviews appropriately and sensitively.

This research has also made me reflect back upon some of the theoretical basis which underpinned my earlier guidance training, in particular with regards to theories of occupational choice. One of the questions which I asked students in the questionnaire was about how they made their choice of degree choice. It is striking that 55% of our students said that speaking to friends or family was a key factor in them making their choice. This seems to support Bill Law’s community interaction theory which states that one of the most influential factors on an individual can be pressure to choose career paths based on what is considered acceptable by family or community groups.

Early Findings

This research has so far been fascinating to conduct and I am still in the process of analysing the findings. However, some interesting trends are starting to emerge. There appears to be a lack of consistency in the level of careers education and guidance which our students have encountered before coming to university and this presents a challenge for us as a service. For example (of the students who were surveyed) 65.6% recalled having a careers guidance interview at school or college. There are some students who have had multiple careers interviews, and others who state that they have had none at all. Of those students who stated that they have had an interview, 36.9% said that it was less than 15 minutes which would seem rather short. Of course, it all depends on what our students remember about the careers education and guidance which they encountered previously.

A potential challenge for HE Careers Services, then could be around how we can address the vastly different levels of careers support which our students have encountered prior to coming to university. Even more important may be how our students’ prior experiences affect how they engage with us now.

During interviews, a number of our students stated that they had had a careers interview but weren’t sure who exactly it was with. This seems to be symptomatic of the fragmented nature of how careers education and guidance is delivered in school and colleges, and the array of varying professionals who are involved in it.

Finally, some students have also talked about the pressure that they felt to choose a degree programme at university and in some cases, how they felt totally unprepared to make that choice. This has also raised questions for me about how all of the above factors can affect retention rates for university degree programmes, and this is perhaps a topic which warrants further investigation.

Laura will give more details about the findings from her research in the summer. Contact Laura at l.aldridge@ljmu.ac.uk

University of Essex - What are the advantages of adopting a discipline-specific versus generic approach to credit bearing employability teaching?

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Tue, 15 Mar 2016 15:25:00 +0000

HECSU's Research Fund is open for applications until the end of May. HECSU members can apply for funding to conduct research into careers and employability topics and successful applicants will receive funding in the summer We have been talking to researchers who were funded this year about the work they are doing so that potential applicants can see the opportunities - and challenges! - HECSU research funding can offer.

This week’s update comes from Helen Standage of the University of Essex.

The focus of this research is to explore the optimal method(s) of teaching credit-bearing employability in HE.
In essence, there are two routes to teaching academic employability 1) a generalised model and 2) a degree-specific model. I understand the generalised approach as being based on pure career theory (e.g., Holland, 1959; Super, 1980; Gottfredson, 1981 etc.) plus related concepts with an emphasis on personal development involving awareness of literatures on human motivation, emotional intelligence, self-efficacy, positive psychology etc. Thus the theoretical substance of the teaching is applicable to all students irrespective of degree discipline and can be conveniently slotted into any degree programme as a discrete module.
I understand the degree-specific model as employability teaching connecting with the degree subject on an intellectual level and embedded within the curriculum. The latter model is more challenging to teach than the former in that it requires expertise in two specialisms - i.e. career theory plus the degree discipline. Given the extra intellectual effort of adopting an embedded approach, it would seem sensible to ask whether the degree-specific model is more effective than the generalised model and this question is the focus of this research.

A literature search, whilst identifying many case study examples of curriculum-embedded teaching (for an overview see Pegg, Waldock, Hendy-Isaac & Lawton, 2012), also revealed an absence of direct empirical research reporting the merits of a degree-specific over a generalised approach to teaching employability in HE. So, a team in the Careers Centre at the University of Essex applied for HECSU funding to research the question.

Method

A field study was undertaken exploiting an existing credit bearing employability module. This module was originally universal and taught to a group of first-year Sociology students with no concerted attempt at intellectual linkage with the home subject. However, for a group of first year Literature students, the employability module was contextualised to blend with the degree subject. Student numbers in each Sociology/Literature teaching group were in excess of 125 and all undertook a ten week compulsory 15 credit module.

On module completion, a survey using Qualtrics software was sent to the Sociology and Literature students. The survey questions focused on ascertaining the level of engagement, achievement and satisfaction with the module. In addition the survey asked for information on hours of work experience undertaken pre and post studying on the module. The prediction, based on past case study research, is that the degree-specific model of employability teaching is optimal and therefore Literature in relation to Sociology students should score higher on each of the 4 outcome measures (engagement, achievement, satisfaction and increased work experience post module study).

Analysis

Data has been collected and is in the process of being analysed.
A difficulty with any survey emailed to students is low response rates. To date we have approximately 70 completed surveys out of a possible 250ish. Obviously low participant numbers reduce statistical clarity, however we should have sufficient data to produce some interesting if not conclusive findings - watch this space!

Manchester Metropolitan University - Student perception and use of video interviewing techniques

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 17:16:00 +0000

Today we hear from David Nelson at Manchester Metropolitan University and his work on how students perceive the video interviewing techniques that are becoming increasingly popular amongst employers.

“Employers are embracing video technology – how best can we respond to this and help prepare our students”

I like my job, and the greater variety that it increasingly involves is a definite plus point. Research opportunities through HESCU is one such example of this. So, it was with a wave of positivity that I wrote my bid for support to conduct some research into video interviewing technology. And then, I got the money! Is it just me, or at this moment does half you say “great, my idea is a good one” whilst the other half is saying “oh heck (or something similar), I’ve got to do something now”. If I am honest, this state of limbo hung over me for a couple of months but the start of autumn, as it always does, focused my mind.

The background is that in February 2015 the MMU Careers & Employability Service took out a 12 month contract with Sonru to use their video interviewing software as a practise tool for our students and recent graduates. At the same time the HECSU request came round and I thought it might be interesting to find out about what students and academic colleagues think and how we can use this to enhance our work.

My first task was therefore to try to get students to use our video interview practise service. Sounds quite straightforward, but as we all know, getting students involved in new initiatives can be unpredictable. We’ve tried a number of ways; presentations on many courses, central workshops and we’ve also piloted assessed video interviews on our BA(Hons) Sports Marketing Management course. Individual students with an immediate need of a video interview in the coming days have also used the system.

By hook or by crook, the numbers using our video interview service has increased slowly. Of course, I’d rather there was more, but I feel I’ve got enough to work with. Academic colleagues who I’ve worked with on this think it’s great. A challenge going forward will be to build on the work with Sports Marketing Management and get more courses assessing video interviews through their employability units.

In my naivety, I thought “I have motivated students who have used the system, surely getting their feedback and comments should be relatively easy”. Clearly not! Surveys, focus groups and bribing with vouchers. I am trying it all. Again, it’s slowly coming together but a bit more feedback would again be nice. I’ve got another focus group next week and a survey in progress. As part of their Employability Unit, the Sports Marketing Management students also write a reflective piece. I am hoping there will be some good feedback and perceptions to draw from this.

The information gathering is happening, I now need to make sense of it and get it into some order and present the findings. At the moment I am thinking of writing it a bit like a diary over the 12 month period. What worked, what didn’t work, what I might do differently and weave in the student comments and feedback. Some academic colleagues have also said they will happily contribute.

Is there anything to say at this stage? We think the software is a great tool to support our students and academic colleagues who offer employability units. We’ve just renewed the contract with Sonru for a further 18 months. Do the students like using it? The jury is out and we’re getting very mixed messages. A big positive is that students who have taken a video interview through us strongly recommend other students use it. We just need to get more of them to have a go now!

University of Bolton - The reasons and extent for deferred career decision-making amongst students and graduates

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 10:16:00 +0000

HECSU's Research Fund is open for applications . HECSU members can apply for funding to conduct research into careers and employability topics and successful applicants will receive funding in the summer. We have been talking to researchers who were funded this year about the work they are doing so that potential applicants can see the opportunities - and challenges! - HECSU research funding can offer.

Our next project update comes from the University of Bolton, where Vanessa Casaru leads the research:

A small scale survey of year 3 students at the University of Bolton in 2014 revealed that many felt they had not had sufficient guidance on the impact of their degree choice on their future career path prior to coming to the University. They pointed to a drift without focus to Higher Education and felt that whilst they had guidance on UCAS form completion there was very little help with career planning.

This also tallies with the University Careers Service experience that many students are postponing decisions until the later stages of their courses or after they have graduated. This deferring of decisions inevitably has an impact on future employability.

Our project intends to determine the nature of pre- course guidance, to explore the balance of responsibility and to develop a range of strategies to support the student decision making experience and transition process.

A questionnaire has been designed and trialled using Survey Monkey and has been sent to 600 Year 1 undergraduate, home students. The questionnaire asks questions about pre course guidance and what has influenced their choice of course.

Research has taken place around the potential resources, sources of information and websites available to support students.

In order to understand the transition process more fully contact has also been made with the NW Widening Participation Network, Greater Manchester. This will allow us to review what steps HEIs are putting in place to provide additional guidance to a specific cohort, and to see if this varies with the processes for other students as they move from FE to HE.

Contact has been established with some of the lead post 16 careers staff in Bolton schools and Colleges and meetings will take place in the Summer term to gain an insight into the Careers Education and Guidance programmes. The project coordinator is connected to the Bolton Area Wide Group and feeds back progress to this group.

A consumer group of students from across the university has been established to discuss the student learning journey and to identify potential resources and interventions. Students have been recruited from across the University with the support of the Student Union. A Student Communication working group has been established, as the research ties in with the development of a Student Experience strategy. The project team is working very closely with this group to embed the career planning module in order for it to be an integrated part of the student.

The introduction of the Student Experience Team is an exciting development for the University and for this project as a whole, as it will provide a vehicle by which we can address the implementation and the sustainability of a specific IAG module and communication to students.

The response rate to the survey will be crucial and a concern is to gain a representative number. Similarly for the Consumer Group it will be important to gain a representative group and to frame the meetings in order to gain ideas.

There is also sensitivity around pre- course guidance and grey areas around responsibilities which need to be identified and debated.

University of Salford - Uncertain graduate transition – the early career experiences of recent graduates

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Mon, 25 Jan 2016 11:59:00 +0000

HECSU's Research Fund re-opens for applications in February. HECSU members can apply for funding to conduct research into careers and employability topics and successful applicants will receive funding in the summer. We have been talking to researchers who were funded this year about the work they are doing so that potential applicants can see the opportunities - and challenges! - HECSU research funding can offer.

Our second update comes from Fiona Christie at The University of Salford.

The project is going well so far and I am finding it very interesting. I completed a survey of graduates from the target groups in the autumn with a reasonable response (circa 13.5% return) with fairly detailed answers from participants. Mailmerge which I’ve never used before proved useful in writing to about 1500 graduates. Some interesting findings from survey – for example, over half reported they were doing something different in October 2015 to what they were doing for at the time of their DLHE return in January.

I am now immersed in conducting and organising research interviews which I am finding fascinating. Great to do interviews that aren’t careers guidance in which it is all about hearing participant stories rather than giving them advice which is what I do in my day job! My plan is to get 20 in total done by Easter at the latest. I have already found my questions evolving as I am using a biographic and semi-structured approach so interviews for each respondent are a bit different. Having used the HECSU cash as an incentive for participants and also for transcription has been brilliant. As I want participants who may be struggling to find their feet in the job market and are having to make an effort to see me, it's great to be able to give them something to recognise time and participation. But there is quite a lot of admin to-ing and fro-ing to organise interviews around my day job as well as the schedules of the participants. It has been really useful to be able to do interviews over Skype as it means I reach people who wouldn't be able to get in to see me face-to-face. Something about my participants (I am targeting under 25s) that means their lives are a bit more spontaneous than mine is! So I’ve had to be flexible to re-arrange times etc.

There are interesting issues for me as an insider researcher - my role as a careers adviser gives me legitimacy in contacting people but also may influence who responds and how individuals may interact with me during the research process.

As you can imagine, everything takes longer than you think it will! The project is part of my PhD project so things like ethical approval processes slowed my ability to get started. Though it’s also been good to have a supervisor to critique my project design.

Too early to make any claims for my findings yet, but I am looking forward to pulling all the data together after Easter to analyse it properly.

Lancaster University: Graduate Resilience in Early Employment

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Wed, 13 Jan 2016 12:38:00 +0000

Lancaster University received support through the HECSU Research Fund to explore the issue of graduates resigning from graduate jobs or postgraduate study less than 6 months from commencing their employment or course, with the aim of identifying factors contributing to their decision to leave and developing appropriate pre and post graduate interventions that will enhance graduate resilience in the workplace and reduce early resignation.

Researcher Helen Griffiths talks about her experiences:

Our initial work focussed on looking into the extent of the issue, and identifying a target group of graduates for follow up to see what we could learn from their early career experiences. To this end, a group were identified who had reported a positive destination upon graduation (in graduate level work or accepted a job offer, or undertaking or having arranged a place in further study), but who were in a non-graduate level destination at the time of the 2015 DLHE survey.

Two more groups were also identified to survey:

graduate employers - for their perspectives on graduate resilience and retention issues, reasons for resignations and actions that could be taken to mitigate against this.
Lancaster University graduates more established in their careers - to ask what their advice would be for early career graduates as a result of reflecting on their experiences in their own first graduate job or PG course.

A literature search helped with developing awareness of potential areas to explore – and gathered a small collection as a potentially useful reference resource on the subject of graduate resilience.

Thinking about what data to collect – and how to collect it – raised many questions and ideas. Identifying valuable questions was relatively easy; probably the biggest challenge so far has been deciding what to cut out. This feeling was only confirmed when I trialled a draft version of my questionnaire by phone with a willing LU graduate who had changed career direction. He obliged with lots of useful, interesting, thought-provoking responses to my questions… but my questionnaire was far too long! So the challenge now is how to elicit key information efficiently with fewer but more focussed questions.

These are some of my experiences of conducting this research so far, they may or may not be shared by other professionals carrying out this kind of research - I hope they are helpful!

Certain things took much longer than I anticipated, such as refining my interview questions. This was made harder by simultaneously designing three separate but related questionnaires for the different groups of interviewees – but I wanted to be able to compare resilience issues from their different perspectives, hopefully to better inform measures to prepare new graduates for workplace challenges, so it seemed worthwhile to do!
I used a lot of open-ended questions rather than tick boxes or scales, as I thought this might be the best way to capture rich data on the huge range of circumstances that might lead to graduates resigning or changing career direction. This decision is presenting some challenges though: difficulty identifying and capturing the key elements during the flow of the interview; the longer time needed for data collection (capturing responses by writing them down during the interview, or recording and listening again to type up later); and the analysis stage is also more complicated and time-consuming as the responses must be categorised afterwards.
Don’t forget to allow enough time for related activities such as familiarisation with survey software, producing an online version of the survey, and typing up telephone or face-to-face interviews. Online surveys on their own might not generate enough responses.
There are some practical considerations for telephone interviews – eg recording the call, sound quality, using speaker phone with a voice recorder, leaving your hands free to write or fully focussing on the conversation and then typing up afterwards from a recording.

An interesting picture is starting to emerge from the employers (37) and graduates (20) interviewed so far. For example, the value employers put on graduates gaining relevant experience through placements, internships, and volunteering to help them prepare for graduate positions. The majority (approximately two thirds) of employers surveyed did not see retention or resilience among early career graduates as a particular issue; however several of them flagged up the issue of graduates dropping out after accepting a job offer and before starting employment (possibly because of ‘banking’ offers and choosing their preferred one).

The next stage will be to collect data from the group of early career LU graduates, and to carry out further analysis to inform measures that could be taken to prepare graduates for the challenges they may face when starting a graduate job. I’m really looking forward to hearing what they have to tell us!

Our reponse to the CIPD's report on overqualification and skills mismatch.

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Mon, 24 Aug 2015 10:19:00 +0000

The new report from the CIPD is an interesting attempt to examine the use of graduate skills in the workplace and the way that they have changed as more graduates have entered employment.

The report itself is rich, and examines a range of different data sources. It demonstrates that the task of working out what a ‘graduate job’ is and what ‘graduate skills’ might be is extremely challenging, and is not, as yet, concluded. Much of the available data is only partially suited to this difficult job and the report’s authors have done well to use this data to make an interesting contribution to the debate.

The quoted figure of 58.8% for ‘graduates in non-graduate jobs’ is a figure which contradicts other data sources and should not be consumed uncritically. The body of evidence points to this figure being a very significant overestimate.

For example, data from the most recent Destination of Leavers of Higher Education survey of new graduates suggest that 32% of 2013/14 graduate entrants to the labour market were in non-graduate jobs after six months and that this figure has fallen since the depths of the recession.

Further, much of the crucial analysis in the CIPD paper goes up to 2011 – 4 years ago, and at the depths of the recession. It’s dangerous to use some of the worst labour market conditions for a generation to examine the situation 4 years on and in better economic conditions.

The story of the graduate jobs market is one of constant change. New companies rise, using new technologies and creating new jobs. Other jobs change dramatically or disappear. Our challenge is to find a way to properly reflect that and understand how we can equip workers for that kind of labour market. Prospects maintains the view that a university education remains the best and most effective way to equip workers with the skills to adapt to rapid technological and economic change.

But that isn’t all. A university education is about so much more than job training. We believe that university education adds up to more than basic economic value and has significant and profound social benefits as well to individuals and to society at large. We would like to see more and better research on the general social value of university education so that we can ensure young people get a full, rounded picture of the benefits or otherwise of going to university, rather than a persistent focus on one complex issue – that of the ‘graduate job’ – which aims to hit a small, rapidly moving target that forms only part of a much bigger picture.

DLHE Day

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 12:10:00 +0000

(Reblogged from me here)

Once again, today is the day where we see the first release of the new DLHE data for 2013/14. DLHE looks at the outcomes of university leavers from 2013/14 six months after they graduated – so at the start of this year. The first release I linked to primarily examines full time graduates though.

The main thing to take away is that, as expected, the graduate jobs market improved again last year. Employment is up, unemployment down, professional employment is up and salaries are up – the latter have hit the politically-important mean and median of £21,000. This is crucial this year as, of course, this is also the first cohort to have graduated having paid the new tuition fees, and £21,000 is the threshold for loan repayment.

In actual fact, I suspect that when I get the full data next month, the true figure will be slightly below £21k, and so we are probably not yet at the point where the majority of employed graduates will be earning enough to start repaying loans within six months of graduation. It probably won’t be much after that, though, that most will be earning enough.

In terms of employment, the figures are also welcome. 68% of FT graduates were in professional-level employment, up from 66% last year. That’s a pretty encouraging boost – it looks like over 12,000 more graduates were in professional employment than last year – but we’d still like to see a smaller group in employment below professional level after six months (bear in mind that doesn’t mean they’re not necessarily in jobs that don’t need a degree, though). A more detailed breakdown of occupational change will come in time, but here’s a brief summary in graphical form by subject group.

Employment outcomes seem to have improved for all subject groups, with architecture and building, law, business and finance, and mass communication and documentation particularly improved.

Meanwhile, postgraduate outcomes also seem to have improved everywhere, although we have less detail to go on

It looks as if at least some parts of the graduate jobs market may be more-or-less back to where we were before the recession, and it will be interesting to see if the market plateaus out or if increased competition and skills shortage, which are a growing factor in the graduate jobs market, drives more favourable conditions in the next few months.

More when I have more data.

Which industries are most likely to demand a 2:1 or better?

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Thu, 18 Jun 2015 13:38:00 +0000

Reblogged from my own site here:

70% of graduates from 2012/13 who took a degree with a classification got a 2:1 or above, and 76% who were employed in a professional-level job after six months, had got a 2:1 or above. That 2:1 is pretty important.

I have taken a look at the industries that employ the largest and smallest proportions of 2:1s and above, only looking at degrees with the usual classification system, as otherwise health looks weird.

Publishing was the hardest industry to get into without a 2:1 – 86.6% of new entrants had at least a 2:1, and that rises to 93.8% for book publishing. Those who got in without a 2:1 tended to be in journalism or marketing roles, to have got their jobs through personal contacts or agencies, and to be from areas of the country with a high level of HE participation. This is probably worth bearing in mind the next time we hear media commentators telling us about standards; their industry is a very atypical one (and far more London-focused than almost the whole rest of the economy).

Law and accountancy are the next toughest, with 86.2% with 2:1 or above. Accountancy is harder than law – 90% with 2:1 vs 79% with 2:1. Small businesses were more likely to recruit 2:2 or below, mostly as paralegals in law, or as accountants or accounts managers in accountancy, and personal contacts were paramount to get into both industries without 2:1 (although agencies were also important in law).

The third in the list is the ‘other vehicle’ – ie aerospace and defence vehicle – manufacturing industry. 86.1% of new entrants had 2:1 or above. This is quite a small industry for annual recruitment of graduates, and the main roles are in engineering, where skills shortages mean that engineers with 2:2 or below sometimes get jobs in the sector, often through personal contacts.

Below are the industries most likely to ask for a 2:1.

At the other end of the scale is the residential care industry, where 61% of new professional entrants had a 2:1. 50.4% of new entrants to residential care nursing had 2:1 or above, rising to 63.4% to roles specifically in the care of the elderly and disabled. Many of these jobs are in nursing or general welfare roles, and are filled through agencies and the data suggests there are recruitment shortages, especially in London, but it also looks as if some jobs that are being coded as graduate and being taken by graduates may not really require a degree.

64% of new entrants at graduate level to the food and beverage service industry had a 2:1 or above – much the most common roles here are as pub or restaurant managers, where a 2:1 is useful but not vital, and a similar story is in the sports and leisure industry where 65% of new entrants had 2:1 or above, and the crucial subsector is in sports and leisure centre management, where a 2:1 is not absolutely vital.

Industries least likely to ask for a 2:1 for new graduate entrants from 2012/13

It is possible to get into a professional job without a 2:1, but you might need to be realistic about your target industries and to work whatever contacts you have available to stand a decent chance of getting in. This may ease as skills shortages really begin to bite, but it’s always best to assume you have a fight on your hands and to prepare for it.

Masters level jobs

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 16:34:00 +0000

I've been examining graduate entry to different professions as part of overall efforts to examine SOC classifications - and particularly the long-running question of whether the split between 'professional' and 'non-professional' roles is an accurate reflection of the actual level of qualification required for these roles (SPOILER: no).

One of the things I've been interested in for a while is whether there are roles for which a level of qualification other than first degree is required.

Obviously, we have the idea of a 'graduate job', which is a role that you need an Bachelors first degree to get into. A lot of roles fall into that category, and there's a thriving graduate jobs market.

We also have another set of roles, in academia, R&D and in parts of psycholog, that require a doctorate. And the PGCE has a rather obvious niche

But are there other jobs that require a certain level of qualification?

Looking at 2012/13 data, it appears we have a job for which the following criteria are now satisfied:

- more people entering the role with Masters than undergraduate degree
- the majority of Masters level entrants say their Masters was an absolute requirement.

This is town planning, and I think we can reasonably say that if this is not now a Masters level job, it will do until a Masters level job shows up. There are a handful of other roles where one or other of those two criteria are fulfilled and the other is close - speech therapy, surveying and librarian/archive/curation roles, which geology not far behind. It would appear that a Masters-level employment market is developing, and that as the labour market develops, these roles may slowly become closed off to undergraduates.

I'm going to keep an eye on this area and see if this niche expands. It will be especially interesting if some of the more general graduate jobs start to get more Masters-oriented.

Recovery position

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 12:52:00 +0000

Today's AGR survey findings reinforce that we are in a recovery - or at least a recovery for graduates. This builds on the High Fliers report from last week, and is very much along the same lines. That's not surprising, as they're both surveying the same employers - but the AGR has twice as many.

Let's not fixate too much on the specific numbers - public sector recruitment will not be up 13% this year, the figure merely represents how important Teach First is to the sample. The AGR survey is excellent data for the AGR sample, but it's not yet representative of the entire graduate jobs market. In that vein, it's refreshing to see that the AGR have not included a salary figure in the press release as their salary figures, although fine in context of their high profile, high status graduate training schemes, are some way away from the experience of most graduates.

The crucial thing is that employment is on the up, and for graduates, the recession is essentially over and we're well into recovery. Another sign that this is taking place is in the AGR noting that vacancies are going unfilled and students are turning down job offers. Some of the offers that business has become used to making in the last few years will look less attractive in a job market that is improving, and with applicants who are more confident that they have other options. And there are outright skills shortages - the AGR mention IT, where all the reports agree there are developing shortages of graduates.

So, the signs are that after a long period where employers held the all the cards when dealing with students and graduates, that the advantage may be moving back towards applicants. That doesn't mean graduates won't have to work hard to get jobs, but it does mean that this year's finalists can be a little more confident about the future.

The 2015 graduate jobs market - how will it look?

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Fri, 02 Jan 2015 10:00:00 +0000

Enough back-patting, let's look at the 2015 graduate jobs market. This is a lot trickier than 2014, to be honest - in fact, it's probably the hardest to predict since the recession because of - well, you can take the second reason to work out why.
So, let's start with the first prediction:

Economic recovery - slow and patchy

This is a slow recovery and a lot of people are concerned about issues that could blow it off course. My feeling is that the economy is likely to continue a basic upward trend, but it may not be as strong and sustained as it was in the last 18 months. I'd expect the outcomes for graduates from 2014 to be slightly better than 2013, especially in building and architecture, engineering and financial services (and computing!). By the end of the year, we still won't be back to where we were before the recession.

Uncertainty and the election

Uncertainty is back, and that breeds labour market caution. There are a lot of big things going on - we saw how much this can affect things in the second half of the year when the Scottish referendum brought an awful lot of uncertainty to graduate recruiters and the jobs market was disrupted. We have a General Election in May and that's going to affect the graduate jobs market. This isn't the blog for dissecting the right and wrongs of political policies, but some do have an effect on graduate recruitment.
Continuing public sector cuts will disproportionately affect the employment of graduates, particularly women and those outside the south east and if enacted that will probably mean more concentration of jobs in London and the overheated housing market there. Curbs on foreign students won't have an effect on unemployed home graduates - they'll just mean more hard-to-fill vacancies for recruiters and more skills shortages, with an effect on growth and on wages. And if business doesn't think a new Government's economic policy provides a stable platform for the national finances, they'll be reluctant to invest - and that means fewer jobs.
But the most likely outcome of the election is a Government with a small majority and little room for manoeuvre, possibly a coalition of parties with often differing economic and social priorities, or even a minority Government. This doesn't breed economic certainty and a lot of decisions are likely to be deferred until after May.

Oil

Very much a double-edged sword here. A lower oil price is good for the running costs of business and that might make them keener to recruit. Logistics, for example, is seeing skills shortages and may be a promising hunting ground for graduates looking for a less conventional challenge. But the big graduate success story of the last few years, Aberdeen, is already seeing belts being tightened and facilities being mothballed. A few more months of low oil prices is not going to be great for that part of the world and not for the jobs market for engineers and geologists, although both are in demand.

The regions - again

I could pretty much cut out last year's prediction and put it in here. London will continue to thrive and may continue to capture a larger share of the graduate jobs market. The REF 2014 results will not help, as they could drive a greater concentration of HE funding to the capital and south east. The larger cities - Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Cardiff, Belfast - will continue to do well, with other cities with reasonable graduate jobs markets, including Bristol, Newcastle, Sheffield, Nottingham, Leicester, Liverpool, Oxford, Cambridge, Norwich (I've doubtless missed somewhere important), as well as the commuter towns and regions of the east and south east, will probably also see opportunities. But outside those areas graduates looking for work may not find a great deal, particularly if public sector employment continues to fall. Some towns or regions with a strong engineering sector, like Derby, Lancashire and Warwickshire may find that a demand for engineers boosts the local economy.

Skills shortages and wages

There are clear signs of skills shortage in the graduate jobs market, in engineering and parts of financial services. Added to this, the ONS have noted that professional level roles are seeing wage rises above inflation. This suggests we might start to see increased starting salaries and pay rises for graduates - at least those in jobs that are in demand. I'm not so sure about engineers, though - a lot depends on how the oil and gas industry, which has been driving up wages, responds to low oil prices. Of course, higher salaries mean higher costs for business, so we will have to monitor business confidence.

In summary

We're still in a shallow but sustained recovery, and so the likelihood is that we'll see a modest improvement in the prospects for graduates in 2015, but probably not as much of an improvement as we saw in the last 18 months. There is a lot of uncertainty about, particularly with an election in 5 months, and with oil prices dipping. London is likely to continue to be strong, and there'll be opportunities in the larger cities, but other areas may not fare as well. Skills shortages in some sectors, particularly in technical areas like engineering and computing, may start to bite and salaries might start to rise.

Am I right? I guess we'll see in a year. Good luck to everyone in 2015.

Charlie's Crystal Ball - how did I do predicting the 2014 graduate jobs market?

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 13:25:00 +0000

Happy New Year to the readers of the blog and I hope you both had a pleasant festive season.

The start of the year is a time for traditions, and one of the blog traditions is that I pretend to hate making predictions and then do exactly that, but first, let's check if it's worth actually reading them, by examining last year's speculation and seeing if I were right.

I predicted:

STEM - on the up?

The jobs market will probably improve for graduates from most science and engineering disciplines - particularly for engineers, who have really suffered over the last few years. Although there may well be growth in employment in small specialist engineers, especially those with a good export presence, engineering recruitment will continue to be dominated by the larger firms, and if you want to gauge the engineering jobs market as the year goes by, you could do worse than keep an eye on the big players. I'm not sure that the prospects for biology graduates will necessarily improve though - their jobs market seemed to worsen last year.

Yep, pretty spot on, although biology graduates did see a slight improvement in their fortunes. It wasn't much, though.

Financial and business services to grow

Economic recovery in the UK will necessarily involve growth in finance and business services. Marketing and PR has been a graduate success story in the last few years and has been drawing graduates in from all sorts of disciplines - the rise of digital media and content means that graduates with good IT skills have a niche in marketing - and I don't see any reason why that won't continue. I'm not sure we'll see a huge increase in financial services recruitment but we will probably see a little growth.

Right here as well. Financial services is interesting, though and will bear close inspection in 2015.

Cities on the rise

Although things are broadly positive, this recovery doesn't look very evenly shared out at the moment. It's pretty focussed on London and the south-east, although I'd expect those cities that have weathered the recession reasonably well - Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester, in particular - to probably share some of the joy. Aberdeen's unique jobs market will probably mean another good year for engineers and technical graduates wanting to move up there. But if you're outside those areas, particularly if you're in a smaller town, or in the north of England or Wales, you probably won't see much of a sign that the graduate jobs market is picking up at least at the start of the year. I expect regional and local differences to become more pronounced in the early part of the year - more graduates in the north-west and north-east moving to Manchester and Newcastle respectively, more graduates everywhere heading for London. It remains to be seen whether it'll be a temporary phenomenon or whether a small but subtle permanent realignment of skills concentrations is underway.

The regional agenda became more important during 2014 as it became more clear that the benefits of recovery were not being equally shared. I'd say I was reasonably right - I may have missed Newcastle, Cardiff, Sheffield and Belfast from the list - but I was hoping for a bit more even growth around the country. Aberdeen is another interesting case - I'll talk about that in my 2015 predictions.

In summary

I think the Class of 2014 will find the jobs market a little more welcoming than their counterparts from the last two or three years. Not where it was pre-recession, but a little kinder. Unemployment in DLHE will be about 8% and starting salaries around £20k as they were this year. They'll still have to work hard - very hard in many cases - to find work, but they might find it a little easier and they'll have careers staff who are now well-versed in recession job-hunting to help them out. Happy New Year, and good luck to everyone.

If anything, I erred on the side of caution - actually, the overall market improved more than I expected.

I also suggested that other reports of a surge in the IT market were a bit overblown and that computing graduates would still have high unemployment rates. Well, I was half right. Computing graduate unemployment rates are still high, but the IT market did improve markedly and there are now skills shortages. I'm trying to get to the bottom of how both these things can be true at the same time with the help of data kindly provided by the UKCES, so watch this, and other, spaces.

So, in the end, I really didn't do too badly at all. I clearly have terrifying psychic powers, like a graduate labour market Professor X.

Next up, using those powers for good by making predictions for 2015.

What proportion of jobs for graduates do not require a specific subject?

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Tue, 09 Dec 2014 16:16:00 +0000

If there is any one question I've been asked more than any other over the years, this is it.

We used to be able to answer it using ads from the old Prospects Directory, but as print declined in popularity and with the rise of specialist agencies and sites, it became difficult to get a source of jobs data for graduates that was large enough and close enough to representative of the whole market to have a stab at a reasonable analysis.

So, for years, we've been saying that about 60% of jobs for graduates don't need a particular degree subject, and that as far as we know, it hasn't gone down and is more likely to have increased. And I've been looking for a data source.

I've got a data source.

Prospects Net covers over 60 careers services and we can examine some basic information on all of the roles advertised on Prospects Net services in 2014 - in this case, very simple data on the subjects requested (if any) by advertisers. I have subject data for 144, 180 jobs - a healthy sample.

71% of these jobs didn't specify a particular subject and so were theoretically open to graduates from any discipline.

Now, of course, this doesn't cover all jobs offered to graduates this year, and I can't be sure the sample is completely representative. It probably isn't completely, and there are going to be jobs for people above first degrees. Some jobs will be part time as well.

So the number probably isn't exactly 71%, but it's somewhere in that vicinity. This is a large sample, it's reasonably representative, so I think we can say that about 70% of jobs for graduates are open to graduates from any discipline.

Graduate skills shortage and demand - stitching the data together

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 16:36:00 +0000

As the economy continues a slow and meandering recovery from recession, a number of reports are indicating that certain graduates may be in short supply.

The UKCES Employer Skills Survey, a fascinating and data-rich piece of work (yes, 150 data tables) forms the backbone of much of this concern. The diagram here also appeared as part of the more recent ‘Growth Through People’ report, and deserves some attention.

We also have the newer Employer Perspectives Survey (194 data tables) to look at – although both UKCES reports have been out a while, the data was only recently made available.

Graduates fall into the first three categories; managers, professionals, and associate professionals. In the former, there’s a skills shortage in the construction industry. If we unpick data from the two UKCES surveys, we find that 66% of construction employers had recruited someone under 25 in the last 3 years, and 4% of employers had taken a graduate in their first job. Jobcentre Plus and word of mouth are much the most important recruitment channels. 17% of employers had worked with universities to offer work experience. Much the most common degree subject for new entrants to management roles in construction is building. This story is reinforced by this month’s Bank of England Agents Summary of Business Conditions, which also reports skills shortages in construction.

At managerial level we also need to keep an eye on manufacturing, leisure and tourism and business services, where there are emerging skills shortages.

At professional level, there are shortages in public administration (this is almost certainly flagging up a shortage of social workers, who fall under this sector in many cases), health and social care (could be a number of things, but possibly allied health professionals, such as physiotherapists and midwives. Also, social workers!) and business services (a wide range of potential subjects and occupations) and transport and communications (there are recognised skills shortages both in IT and in logistics). The really big shortage is in manufacturing, though, where it looks as if there’s a shortage of engineers – although it’s not completely clear which engineers in particular. We also seem to need engineers in the utilities as well.

At associate professional level, there are shortages in wholesale and retail – this covers a wide range of roles and degree subjects, but some of the largest are in sales and procurement, and also in IT support – and in business services. This is a very broad area indeed and covers much sales, marketing, design and IT support activity – it’s not clear what is exactly in short supply and it would be helpful to have a little more detail. We also need to monitor manufacturing (more engineering supply issues), transport (IT, by the looks of it) and the utilities (engineers again) because issues may be arising there as well.

There’s a lot of handy data in these UKCES reports; it’s a shame that what is available isn’t more detailed as we could really start to get to grips with exactly where there are problems and what we can do as a sector to address them. The October report on the logistics sector, building on this data and identifying IT, engineering, business analysis (particularly quantitative data analysis) and management as key areas of skills shortage, although focussing more on skills challenges below degree level, is a welcome start. The data is in there, and we can hope that more work will be done to unpick it.

(originally published at High Peak Data)

Over- and Under- employment

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Wed, 26 Nov 2014 12:14:00 +0000

The ONS produced some interesting new stats yesterday on over- and under- employment in the economy - as defined by those employees who would like to work fewer or more hours, respectively.

Normally underemployment gets a lot of the headlines - indeed, the release itself is titled as a release on underemployment, but it's interesting to compare the two sets of data by occupation.

If you're working in a professional-level job - as the large majority of graduates do - you are much more likely to report being overemployed than underemployed. There are two inferences you could draw from this. The first is that it is probable that graduates are more likely to be overemployed than underemployed. I can't prove this directly as the data isn't to hand, but it looks very probable.

The second is that it certainly doesn't appear to suggest an oversupply of graduates. It may be arguable that we have more graduate level work to do than working graduates to do it, although people are clearly actually doing that work, even if they'd rather not. Lets hope we get more data here so we can get a clearer picture.

Arts vs science: data wins

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Fri, 21 Nov 2014 15:56:00 +0000

As I never tire of telling people, my PhD is in analytical chemistry. Therefore, in the great Arts vs Science debate, my sympathy naturally lies with the evidence.

So, should people stop opting for the arts en masse because they won't get jobs, and go for STEM, where they will?

Let's have a look at the data. As usual, we'll take a look at DLHE. I am a creature of habit, and besides, it does the job perfectly well.

Just to get the methodology straight, we're looking at UK domiciled first degree graduates from 2012/13. Arts and humanities are defined as JACS codes Q to W, so covering languages, classics, the humanities, the arts and the creative arts. It doesn't include law, media, business or the social sciences.

STEM is classed as JACS codes C to J. It covers the biological and physical sciences, maths, computing, engineering and the material sciences. It doesn't cover building or medical subjects.

I think we can all reach our own conclusions, but STEM appears more popular than the arts, and the data doesn't suggest that the arts are necessarily going to make you significantly less employable.

One of the big advantages of the UK graduate jobs market is that so many roles don't really specify a specific discipline. Yes, if you want to be a doctor or build bridges, you're going to need a specific subject, but for many jobs (arguably, the majority although it's not as easy to work that out as it once was), your subject doesn't matter as much as the skills and experiences you have (I try to recommend people try to keep their maths skills up, though). Someone doing a subject they're motivated to study is likely to learn more, get better skills and be more likely to get a good degree grade.

If you shoehorn people into degrees they don't really want to do, all you'll do is create a lot of indifferent entrants to those jobs who change careers when they can.

This looks like an entrant into the 'graduate jobs myths' file.

Job mobility

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 14:54:00 +0000

The October 2014 Economic Review from the Office of National Statistics includes a very interesting section on job-to-job flows - the propensity for employees to change employer.

The section runs from pages 17 to 22, and covers Figures 10 to 13, with accompanying data.

In short, the propensity for workers to change job of their own volition has increased, and this is considered a sign of increased confidence and economic recovery.

Here's a graph showing job moves since Q1 in 2003.

'High Occupations' are professional level jobs, the currently-accepted shorthand for graduate jobs. What's interesting here is that there hasn't been much change in the proportion of people moving within high level jobs (about 0.6% of the workforce) or into higher occupations (about 0.4% of the workforce) since the start of 2013. Indeed, moving to a higher occupation was particularly affected by recession, although it has recovered and appears to be increasing.

As this graph shows, we're also seeing a rise in people switching industry, which may be another sign of confidence and gives us information for graduates to tell them that changing industry is not that uncommon. Last quarter 1.1% of the workforce moved industry.

It is interesting to see how this data dropped as recession began - and it is another piece of information suggesting we have a little way to go before we make recovery.

Graduate unemployment rates after six months, from 1975/6 to 2012/13

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 10:28:00 +0000

This is an examination of the early unemployment rate of graduates - specifically, the percentage of UK domiciled first degree graduates who were known to be unemployed six months after graduating, for the years from 1975/6 onwards.

This one is pretty self-explanatory, and I update it every year. As we can see, this year saw a drop in the early unemployment rate, but we're not back to the relatively benign conditions we saw at the end of the 90s and early part of the last decade. It also shows quite how atypical those conditions actually were.

The recovery looks quite like the one we saw in the 90s, but it remains to be seen if we see unemployment falling again or if it will level out this year.

What Do Graduates Do 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Thu, 25 Sep 2014 15:59:00 +0000

As readers may have gathered, What Do Graduates Do? 2014, which uses 2012/13 DLHE data from HESA to examine graduate outcomes, is out today.

We've had a gratifying amount of press coverage, along with a live interview at Media City for You and Yours on Radio 4, which was quite exciting.

The main message is positive, and pretty much covered by the piece I did in the Guardian last week. The graduate jobs market has improved, but it is not yet recovered from recession. So although graduates can hope for better labour market conditions, they'll still need to work hard to get jobs. But there's much more detail in the book.

What Do Graduates Do can help provide evidence and information for anyone involved in student careers and employability, and as well as the data on outcomes for a range of popular subject options, has insightful articles on further study options, on self-employment, on mature graduates and on postgraduate outcomes.

You can download it, for free, from our site.

Some thoughts on 'graduate retention'

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Fri, 19 Sep 2014 10:34:00 +0000

My last post took a look at graduate migration, but I've also been talking with various interested parties about graduate retention a great deal in the last few weeks, and it's not always a straightforward question.

Let's take a university city to illustrate some of the question. I'm going to use Nottingham, not for any particular reason (although I like Nottingham).

Nottingham has two universities. So, there are a series of different groups of graduates to be retained. Group One, is the group of graduates who originally hail from Nottingham. Group Two are graduates who studied in Nottingham. I think most analysts would consider the group being 'retained' are those who studied in Nottingham, but what about graduates originally from Nottingham who studied in, say, Bristol, but then come home to Nottingham? Are they being 'retained'?

Then we have the question of 'where are they being retained'? The City of Nottingham is obvious. What about graduates who work in Nottinghamshire? Are they being 'retained' as well? Arguably yes - in fact, I'd argue they are. The idea of 'Nottingham' as a place to work in graduate terms probably needs to include places that are not within the strict boundaries of the City of Nottingham in order to understand all the places on which Nottingham exerts a significant economic influence and is therefore involved in the processes whereby graduates choose places to work and thus exert their own economic influence. I usually work this out by looking at the places where graduates who hailed from or studied in a particular place actually went to work. This does something provide some interesting insights; few people familiar with the places will be much surprised that graduates from Southampton rarely seem to work in Portsmouth, or vice versa, for example.

And does that mean, if we're looking at 'retention' as a function of original domicile, we then include Nottinghamshire?

What I favour, therefore, is examining retention thus:

All graduates who studied in the location for which retention is being studied, and then examining all those areas which are essentially within an economic sphere of influence of that region - often rather similar to a travel-to-work area. Sometimes, if it's a Government Office region, say the North West, we can stick to the regions. If it's a city or local authority or LEP region, it's best to gauge where graduates who study there actually go to work first in case we lose insight into an important part of the local labour market that doesn't fit within a neat geographical or political boundary, but is significant to people looking to live and work nearby.

These are all very interesting questions, and a reason I use the categories I do in publications examining migration, because it becomes more insightful if you use a matrix of domicile and location of study to examine retention.

And that reminds me, I really need to look at this year's data!

Some thoughts (and a graph) on graduate migration

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Fri, 29 Aug 2014 10:38:00 +0000

There's a lot of interest in graduate migration at the moment, so here's something I just looked at from this year's DLHE to give a bit of a basic idea about graduate movements.

This looks specifically at the balance of graduates between their original home domicile and where they're working after six months. It doesn't take into account where they studied (although that does have a bearing).

London remains the big net gainer of graduates and most of the rest of the country see a gradual movement of graduates out of the region after they have been to university - Yorkshire remains the exception. This is at a regional level, of course - there is also movement within regions and many cities are at a strict level, net gainers of graduates. Having chosen Nottingham purely at random, I can see that more graduates from 2012/13 were working in the City of Nottingham then were originally domiciled there - they are, of course, often coming from other parts of Nottinghamshire.

As a very rough rule of thumb, English graduates usually do one of three things on graduating, in order of likelihood (it's a bit more complicated for Scottish and Welsh graduates)

1. They go back to their original home region.
2. They stay in the region they studied.
3. They go to London (or Belfast if they're Northern Irish - Northern Irish graduates are nearly as likely to go to Scotland or the North West as they are to go to London).

There are some differences - graduates from the South East are more likely to have London as number one or two in the list, but in general that order holds. And because London is the one place that graduates from all over go to, then it ends up as the big net gainer. It's an interesting subject.

Destination data - we're looking a lot better this year

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 14:16:00 +0000

We now have DLHE data, and work is now under way on What Do Graduates Do, which will look at destination data in the traditional detail.

The first impression is that outcomes for 2012/13 graduates are a marked improvement on last year, as is being reported elsewhere.

Here are the basics, for all graduates (the HESA press release tends to look just at full-time graduates, we look at all graduates, part time and full time). The employment rate is up and the unemployment rate is quite a bit down.

Let’s take a look at that unemployment rate of 7.3 per cent, as it’s interesting. The last times the graduate unemployment rate after six months fell by more than one percentage point in a year were in 1995/6 (from 8.1 per cent to 6.9 per cent) and then again in 1996/7 (from 6.9 per cent to 5.7 per cent) as the economy recovered from the recession of the early 90s. 7.3 per cent is the lowest unemployment rate for graduates after six months since before the recession, in 2006/7.

This data shows all the signs of a recovery in the graduate jobs market, and the lessons of previous recessions tell us that if this has started in earnest (and it may not – the early 90s recovery was patchy and it might happen again), it’s likely to take place over a couple of years (so there’s a good chance that the jobs market will continue to improve) and will then level off. If I were a betting man – which I’m not, because, you know, statistics – I would put my money on that levelling off not taking place for another couple of years yet. Next year is crucial. If we see another clear improvement in graduate outcomes, we can declare a Proper Recovery for graduates and look forward to the employment rate (inc. work and study) creeping up towards 80 per cent and the unemployment rate down to around the 6 per cent mark.

The news is not all unalloyed good, of course. It looks like the extra jobs are not evenly distributed at all and that recovery has increased both the number of graduates working in London, and London’s overall share of graduate employment. Other cities have also done well (Manchester particularly, by the look of things), but I’ve got mixed feelings about a graduate recovery that entrenches London’s position. I’d rather see jobs better distributed for the wider national economic health. Maybe if recovery continues we will see a more even share of the spoils next year. Let’s hope so.

In the meantime, let’s be happy that, for graduates, we appear to be embarking on a recovery, that these improved figures will reflect very hard work from students and from the people who guide them, but bear in mind that very many will still find it hard to make the next steps on their career after graduation, and we need to help them.