Classification

My last University of Reading meeting was that of the Careers Advisory Board this morning. It was the second meeting of the board this year, and therefore the place to discuss the annual, government-required Graduate First Destinations Survey. Such surveys are always good sources of spinnable material.

The survey is prepared by HESA to ensure the same template is used nationwide, and the results themselves were relatively unremarkable. Some slight fluctuations, and a few concerns that electronic engineering students seemed to be having some trouble finding employment in that field, but no real surprises.

Once we had reviewed this year’s results, however, we were informed that there would be a change in categorisation from next year. No longer would we simply have “graduate”, “graduate track” and “non-graduate” jobs, instead we will have: “traditional graduate occupations”, “modern graduate occupations”, “new graduate occupations”, “niche graduate occupations”, and “non-graduate occupations”. This list, unsurprisingly, raised some bemused smiles.

Finer grained information is useful, but this new categorisation raised questions in my mind about government claims of increasing requirements for graduates in the modern economy. There is little doubt in my mind that the economy will need an increasing number of employees who have training that can be provided through higher education, but further examination of the new categories suggests that the revised survey will not allow easy comparison between this past year and next year.

“Graduate-level job” is set to become much more diffuse, the numbers of such jobs is certain to increase, and the statistics will become still less useful.