Graduate Salaries - The Summary

So, the dust is now settling, and here are the figures.

High Fliers survey: Average salary £23,000

Incomes Data Services: Average salary £21,688

Association of Graduate Recruiters: Average salary £23,000

So, they all say more or less the same thing, so they must all be reasonably accurate, right?

Wrong.

They're all measuring pretty much the same organisations - large, London-based blue-chip employers, mainly in financial services and management consultancy, with a smattering of the largest Milk Round recruiters added in.

They represent about one in ten of the jobs that this years' graduates will actually be doing when they leave university, and don't cover, to give some examples of important employers, much in the way of employers in the media, sciences, local government, social and welfare professions, medical professions, IT or education. Because of their extreme bias towards jobs in London, they are also effectively representing London salaries.

They aren't bad surveys in and of themselves (although they're generally badly reported), it is just that they are misrepresented as being definitive and representative. This leads to the majority of graduates wondering why they aren't getting paid £23,000, and to non-graduates bearing very little sympathy for graduates who do suffer financial trouble. They also give the impression that 'good' graduates aspire to the jobs covered by these surveys and that those earning less than these figures have failed in some way.

They need to be reported better.

Oh, the average salary for a new graduate from 2004 was £17,029.

Technorati tags: graduate salaries,degrees,universities