HESA release graduate employment figures

Today saw the first findings of HESA's much-anticipated longitudinal study of graduates from the 2002/3 leaving cohort.

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.

Technorati tags: higher education, universities, graduate employment, graduate salaries

The IPOD Generation

I am an idle researcher. Apologies to my reader for not getting around to the Sainsbury Review analysis promised earlier (yet). Blimey, it's a bit of a monster job, but I will limp through it, eventually.

Let's, instead, have a small roundup.

First, Reform's exciting report on the "IPOD generation" - 18-34 year olds who are Insecure, Pressurised, Overtaxed and Debt-Ridden, and how convenient that these characteristics form an easily recognised acronym! Now, having spent most of my life in that age group and only (relatively) recently left it, I don't necessarily disagree with many of the findings of the report. But as far as graduates go, the authors have used incorrect figures for graduate earnings (using the annual NatWest survey which takes a biased sample, and has methodological flaws) to pretend that graduate salaries fell between 2005 and 2006. They did not, and the only way that they could make this statement was to choose the only survey out of several that showed it.

They also play a slightly dicey rhetorical trick by placing rising student numbers next to figures for rising youth unemployment - leading readers to obvious conclusions - without admitting that in the time period they are covering, early graduate unemployment (ie six months after graduation) has fallen - from 7.6% in 1997 to 6.0% in 2006.

In short, this report and the news coverage around it needs to be read very carefully because it could mislead people.

Also in the news is this piece from Stephen Machin and Sandra McNally of the LSE. It is really a digest from this piece (warning, pdf) they wrote earlier in the year for the OECD, and it is a review of the evidence of the effects of tertiary education on economic and social objectives. Machin and McNally show that the evidence available points to the need to increase higher education participation in the UK, that we are not over-supplied with graduates as a whole and that returns to study to higher education are real, significant and not being eroded to any great extent.

It hasn't had a lot of coverage. Shame.

Technorati tags: higher education, universities, graduate employment

Grade Inflation Or Claim Inflation

This piece has appeared in the Guardian today, and it is a very interesting study for anyone who likes to compare headlines with content.

The article by Polly Curtis presents the case that an "authoritative new study" presents "evidence of grade inflation" at Russell Group universities which will lead to "accusations of dumbing down" that haven't been levelled at these universities before.

This is all very exciting. Let's look at what's actually happened.

Mantz Yorke, who has been studying this area for some time and knows his stuff, has written a book (which was out in April). In it he presents some data on degrees awarded which shows that the number of 2:1s and Firsts awarded went up between 1994/5 and 2001/2.

So, the data is old.

In the article, Yorke is quoted as saying,

"My evidence suggests that people who attack colleges and new universities for softening or dumbing down are perhaps a little premature"

Which is not quite the same as accusing the Russell Group of grade inflation.

Later in the article, Curtis herself says,

As Yorke himself points out, rising grades do not necessarily indicate 'grade inflation'.

Before going on to explain why. In addition the allegation that this is all rather new will come as news to Tony Mooney, author of this piece from 2003 in the Guardian on, er, Mantz Yorke's research into grade inflation (using, er, the same data as in his book of this year), in which Yorke concludes,

...there is, on present data, little evidence that the percentage of good degrees has been inflated across any of the whole universities whose data have been analysed.

So, let's summarise. An eyecatching piece in the main paper and currently occupying a key spot on the much-visited Guardian website concerns a book that's been out for 6 months, analysing data that's now over 6 years old, that doesn't support the headline or opening paragraphs of the article and rehashes a 4 year old piece from the same newspaper anyway.

And yet, the effect will be, for casual readers, to give the impression that our degree system is deteriorating. It smacks of a journalist playing the age-old game of 'Let's You And Him Fight' justified by the publication, next week, of a review of qualification classifications.
There is a need for a proper, grown-up debate on degrees and their value, but this is not the opening sally into that arena, unfortunately. This isn't a case of educational grade inflation, just a case of journalistic claim inflation.

Technorati tags: higher education, universities, degree standards

Careers Advice Is All Rubbish, Say All

Two important pieces of work out in the last few days, and they both have one thing in common - they criticise careers advice to science students.

The first is the leviathan Sainsbury Review of Government Science and Innovation Policy, as not reported particularly by a Press more concerned that they aren't going to get to play elections this autumn than with the long term viability of the UK as a science and technology innovator.

The second is the a much more specialist report from the Council for Science and Technology, which is reviewing how the situation for young researchers at university has improved since the Roberts Review finally told the world, in 2002, how badly our brightest young people were being treated.
Depressingly, the answer to 'how have things improved' is 'hardly at all'.

Anyway, both reports are authoritative, consult widely, and criticise careers advice and guidance without apparently speaking to anyone involved in producing or disseminating it in HE.

Indeed, neither report really even tries to summarise what is available. This is especially disappointing for the CST's report, because one thing that has definitely improved since Roberts is the standard and availability of careers information and guidance to young researchers. Many universities have dedicated, well-briefed advisers specifically for PhD graduates and postdocs. This is not reflected in the report.

The Sainsbury Review, meanwhile, calls for summaries of graduate populations to be published when most of the relevant data already exists and is available to the general public.

Careers advice is an easy - and fashionable - target. It is a shame that it does not appear that advisers, researchers, or bodies who deal with either at HE level did not get consulted (the Sainsbury Review did, at least, appear to consider Connexions before sticking the boot into HE)

More to come on these reports - hopefully a little more positive.

Technorati tags: higher education, universities, postgraduates, Sainsbury Review, postdocs

Education at a Glance 2007

The OECD has produced the annual ‘Education At A Glance’ international comparison report and, as is now traditional, it does an excellent job of trashing a lot of persistent myths about the UK higher education system

- We send too many people to university
No, actually, we don’t. We lag behind a number of countries in terms of university participation, including Australia and New Zealand. Our rate of increase in university participation has slowed down considerably, and a whole suite of countries are expanding more rapidly than us. We’ll get overtaken by all sorts of nations at the current rate.

- We don’t have many science graduates
Actually, we seem to – 1.9% of the employed population aged 25-34 have a science degree or higher compared to an OECD average of 1.3%. 18% of degree holders got science qualifications compared to an OECD average of 11% - only Ireland is higher. (To be fair, we have plenty of biologists, but not many chemists, for example).

- It’s not worth going to university.
I can forgive press misinterpretation of some issues in higher education, but this is the one where I feel they’re guilty of damaging misrepresentation of the issues.
The OECD rather starkly demonstrates just how beneficial going to university is – an earnings advantage, for graduates aged 30 to 44 years, of 61%. It goes up to 77% for a 2:1 or higher. Part of this is because, as the report admits, employment prospects for those who have no upper secondary qualifications are especially poor. The national economy is changing so that those with poor or no skills will soon have very little opportunity.

With that in mind, those who discourage young people to try to improve their own educational level ought to be very careful and should make themselves au fait with the actual situation. This is not data that is amenable to being manipulated by our Government, and indeed there is a fair amount in here to concern it.

Technorati tags: higher education, universities, higher education statistics