Researchers urge “recession generation” of graduates to have their say in the 2019 Futuretrack survey
What has really been going on in the graduate labour market since the 2008 financial crisis? What happened to new graduates who graduated just after it, in 2009 and 2010? What have been the longer-term consequences of graduating into the particularly difficult labour market they experiences? How have ‘graduate jobs’ changed?
Researchers at the University of Warwick's Institute for Employment Research have launched a fifth wave of their unique Futuretrack survey, a UK-wide project following undergraduates who took up their university places in 2006 or in 2007 (after a gap year) to get a clear picture of the opportunities and obstacles faced by the generation of students who graduated just after the 2008 financial crisis – and they want to encourage as many previous participants as possible to get back in touch.
The Futuretrack project investigates the relationship between higher education, career decision-making and labour market opportunities by asking participants to fill in a 20-minute online survey about their experiences since graduating. Questions could include career history since 2011, career evaluations and aspirations, work-life balance, and longer-term career and family aspirations. Some graduates will then be invited to take part in a more detailed phone conversation.
Professor Kate Purcell said: “A link to the survey has been sent to all previous respondents, but as our Futuretrack generation make progress in their careers, they change their emails, employers and sometimes their names.
“While responses have been coming in, we want to get as many as possible - the higher the response rate, the more representative, and the more useful our findings will be.
“We want to hear from previous Futuretrack participants we’ve lost touch with, but we are also keen to hear from any graduates who began their undergraduate studies as UK-domiciled students in 2006 or who took a gap year and started at university in 2007.”
- Futuretrack began in 2006 with 120,000 participants. The 5th wave survey closes at the end of August.
- More information is available at: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/ier/futuretrack/participants/
23 August 2019