AGCAS: Longitudinal survey published

Longitudinal survey published

The Higher Education Statistical Agency (HESA) has published the results of its second large-scale longitudinal survey of the 2004/5 cohort of leavers of higher education. The report makes fascinating reading to anyone interested in the graduate labour market.

Employment outcomes

There is a huge amount of data including employment outcomes (after 3.5 years) by subject of study, qualification level, degree classification and ethnicity, as well as comparisons with the DLHE survey (which shows outcomes up to 6 months after graduation). There are also salary statistics and regional data (eg, percentage of the cohort working in each part of the UK by original region of domicile and region of study) and information about how respondents in employment found their jobs.

Satisfied graduates

Also noteworthy is the data on student satisfaction. For example, 86.9% of the cohort were either very or fairly satisfied with their career to date. And most respondents, if choosing again, would not change either their subject of study or their place of study.

The data is supplied to HE institutions in the UK and can be purchased from the HESA website.

Biennial presentation

At the AGCAS Biennial Conference on Wednesday 9 September 2009, Jan Moore of Manchester Metropolitan University and AGCAS's Graduate Labour Market Task Group (GLAM), Catherine Benfield, HESA, and Charlie Ball, HECSU, presented the survey findings and led a discussion about how to use the data effectively and how the survey might be improved for the future. Pesentations will be made available to all delegates shortly.

Have your say

AGCAS members are invited to post comments on the survey and its findings below. You must be signed into the site to view or post comments.

Tags: longitudinal survey dlhe hesa GLAM

Created on: 03 September 2009

Last updated: 17 September 2009