Speakers: Professors Kate Purcell and Peter Elias, CBE, Gaby Atfield and Dr Erika Kispeter

Date and time: 1.00 pm - 3.30 pm, Thursday, 10 March, 2022. Lunch will be provided for those attending in person, with the online event starting at 1.30 pm

Venue: Wolfson Research Exchange, Warwick University Library/Zoom

Please register on Eventbrite: face-to-face event or online event.

A recent IER report prepared for HEFCE and SRHE IER's Dr Heike Behle compares the early pathways of graduates from two leaving cohorts: those who graduated in 1999 (‘class of 1999’) and those who graduated from three year courses in 2009 and from four year courses in 2010 ('class of 2009/2010'). It shows that the proportion of employed graduates working in non-graduate jobs during their first year after graduation has remained high with approximately 36 per cent of all employed graduates from three year courses and, respectively 30 per cent of all employed graduates from four year courses working in non-graduate jobs fifteen months after graduation.

Behle, H. (2016) Graduates in non-graduate occupations (Report prepared for HEFCE and SRHE). London: Higher Education Funding Council for England.

A new report using Futuretrack data, written by Gaby Atfield and Professor Kate Purcell, has been published by DELNI. The report focuses on students from Northern Ireland studying at Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Northern Ireland, students from Northern Ireland studying at HEIs in Great Britain and students from Great Britain studying in Northern Ireland. Findings suggest that Northern Ireland students as a group were happy with the higher education choices they had made. However, the students in the Futuretrack cohort were graduating at a time of recession, and Northern Ireland students were particularly concerned about whether they would see a return on their investment.

Findings from Stage 4 of the HECSU-funded Futuretrack study are highlighted in a special issue of Graduate Market Trends (GMT), published by HECSU (February 2013). An IER research team, led by Professor Kate Purcell, followed the progression of the 2005/2006 cohort of applicants to higher education from application to graduation. Data from the Futuretrack study has raised important questions about the types of employment obtained by graduates, finances, career opportunities and further study.

http://www.hecsu.ac.uk/current_projects_graduate_market_trends.htm

Further details about the research can be found on the IER website at: www.warwick.ac.uk/futuretrack , where PDFs of the project’s published Reports and Working Papers can be accessed and downloaded, as can PDFs of the online questionnaires used for each stage of the longitudinal research.

Professor Purcell notes: "This is the most ambitious and comprehensive research ever undertaken to explore the relationship between higher education and access to opportunity. The data we have collected is extraordinarily rich, the published reports produced so far only show the tip of the iceberg . There is much more to come..!”

Futuretrack, is an ambitious and ground-breaking study of the process of higher education in the United Kingdom. Its ambition was to track applicants for a full-time place in higher education in 2006 as they made their way through the undergraduate stages of higher education and onwards, or the alternative pathways they chose. It was ground-breaking in that it was the first longitudinal survey ever undertaken exclusively via a web-based approach and for which statistical controls could be applied. The Stage 4 report presents the survey of respondents who had completed three or four year undergraduate courses 18 or 30 months previously.