Professors Kate Purcell and Peter Elias discuss whether in today's financial climate it is still worth studying for a degree.

Professors Purcell and Elias are members of the IER research team responsible for Futuretrack, the most extensive investigation of the relationship between higher education and employment ever undertaken in the UK. The survey is being undertaken on behalf of the Higher Education Careers Services Unit (HECSU).

Jenny Bimrose went on a study visit from 8^th – 15^th October to the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, in Port Elizabeth in South Africa, in her capacity as Associate Fellow. During this visit, Jenny presented a keynote at the annual postgraduate research conference, together with her international research collaborators, ProfessorMark Watson and Dr Mary McMahon. The presentation was entitled: ‘Across the miles: International collaborative research’.

This week IER welcomes Dr Kelly Kuang and Sophie Perdrix who will be working and collaborating with Professor Alan Brown and Professor Jenny Bimrose.

Dr Kelly Kuang is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Vocational and Adult Education at East China Normal University. Kelly will be spending a year at the Institute, supported by a China Council Scholarship. Her research interests are focused on tertiary vocational education and training, in particular workplace learning/work based learning, modern apprenticeship and comparative studies of vocational education and training.

Sophie Perdrix is a doctoral student in the field of vocational psychology and career counselling at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. She has been working for three years on an empirical longitudinal study investigating the effectiveness of a career counselling intervention. She will be visiting the Institute until the middle of January.

Professor Jenny Bimrose, Professor Alan Brown and Dr Sally-Anne will be attending the IAEVG conference on Career Guidance and Development Practices around the World, in Cape Town, South Africa (19-21 October). Professor Jenny Bimrose will present with IER Associate Fellows, Professor Mark Watson and Dr Mary McMahon on ‘Paradoxes in the career transitions of older women’. Together with Professor Alan Brown, Jenny will be presenting on ‘Stories of career adaptability from England and Norway’. Dr Sally-Anne Barnes, with Jenny, will present on ‘Developing and integrating IT innovations in careers guidance in the UK’. Sally-Anne will also be showcasing some on the IT systems researched and developed for careers guidance organisations in the UK.

As part of an FP7 funded project, MATURE, Professor Alan Brown, Professor Jenny Bimrose and Dr Sally-Anne are organising a workshop on 29 September to demonstrate ICT systems to support careers practitioners. Since 2008, the Warwick Institute for Employment Research has been working with European colleagues developing demonstrator systems. Four systems will be demonstrated: the first has been designed to support practitioners with their use of labour market information (LMI) in careers practice; the second to support practitioners (and more broadly, employees across organisations) with their continuing professional development; the third to visualise LMI data; and finally, LMI learning and development modules.