Before I go on to comment on Press reaction, here are some pieces: Polly Curtis in the Guardian, Graeme Paton in the Telegraph, Nicola Woolcock in the Times. And here's the BBC on the research. Note the different tone.
Let's compare the figures from the initial destinations survey in 2002/3, which looked at graduates six months after they left university, with these new figures.
But first, a very important point. These new figures examine graduates at all levels. Not just first degrees.
The level of full-time, paid work has gone up from 57% to 74%.
Part time employment has dropped from 8% to 6%.
The level of those who are both working and studying (these are usually doing training courses as part of work - accountancy exams are an example) has remained the same at 9% - some hardy souls are working full time and studying.
The proportion in further study has fallen from 11% to 5%. Not surprising - those who took teaching courses or Masters study on first graduating will have finished long before - but many of those who took PhDs will still be writing up.
The unemployment rate fell from 5% to 2%, which is, to be honest, a surprisingly large fall.
This seems quite good news.
What isn't so great is the news that 80%, as opposed to 71%, of employed graduates were in jobs classified as 'graduate' occupations. Bearing in mind that three years have passed, I would have hoped more would move into graduate level work. Elias and Purcell's work on graduate careers suggested that the level of non-graduate employment for a first degree cohort stabilised at about 10% somewhere between 3 and 4 years after graduating. Maybe things have changed.
Of course, 'non-graduate' does not mean 'bad' or even 'badly paid'. Some graduates choose to take non-graduate jobs for many reasons. But this small increase is still disappointing. Of course, having no previous work to use as a comparison, either in the UK or outside it, we don't know whether this is a good performance or a bad one.
Overall, 14% of graduates were not satisfied with their career - this is, remember, just three and a half years into what is hopefully going to be a long career for many of them. Three and a half years after I graduated, I was pretty hacked off. Now, I am quite serene, experience and perspective having made me realise the value of what I have learnt.
Salaries sat at a median of £23,000, a little below the current median for the UK - not too bad when you consider most of the cohort are in their mid-20s, but probably less than many expected. A degree is a qualification for the long-term, though. It has never been a guarantee of riches.
What is interesting about the press coverage, with the exception of the BBC, is how extremely negative it is. The Times and the Telegraph fail to mention unemployment at all - both focussing on salaries and levels of non-graduate employment. The Guardian concentrates on the pay gap between men and women, generalising about what is an extremely complex (although real) topic. All three papers mention further study as if it were a less desirable outcome than working, with the Telegraph producing a statistic not covered by the press release about graduates doing further study because they couldn't get a suitable job that screams 'out of context'.
(Here's the questionnaire - the Telegraph's factoid comes from Q24, a multiple choice question where a respondent can tick numerous boxes).
It is depressing, although not unexpected, that the press should be so keen to be so negative about a very significant piece of work, and it hinders attempts to have a sensible public discussion of the implications.
Fortunately, politicians have been much more measured. Bill Rammell quoted some stats, whilst David Willetts, to my mind, summed up the real value of this work,
These statistics demonstrate just how varied experiences of higher education can be. These sorts of employability statistics are just some of the facts that students need to know when choosing what courses they want to study, along with how the course will be structured, how many contact hours they'll get and who will be teaching them. Students have a right to know what sort of experience they will be getting at university and beyond
The real significance of this work is that it is a very systematic and painstaking study of a section of graduate careers that we know very little about. We don't know enough about graduate careers to use this data to score political points, and instead should use it as a basis for future comparisons. There's a lot of very interesting insight yet to come from this research, and I'm looking forward to it.
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