The press has been full of negative news stories this year with attention grabbing headlines about the shortages 
of graduate jobs available and the number of graduates who were unemployed or working in part time, unskilled jobs, a year or so after graduating.
The ‘Futuretrack’ survey commissioned by the Government’s Higher Education Careers Service Unit (HECSU), paints a similar gloomy picture of graduate prospects in 2012, but on the flipside, it shows graduates are still extremely positive about their degrees and glad they studied and achieved their degrees.
The ‘Futuretrack’ longitudinal survey, was carried out by Warwick University’s Institute of Employment Research. The survey asked questions to 1000’s of recently graduated students, exploring why students decide to apply to higher education, how they chose their institution and whether they believe that higher education still a good investment. The survey also quizzed its respondents on their experience of the post university employment market.
The survey found that twice the proportion of graduates were unable to find graduate level jobs compared with those that graduated ten years ago. Similarly, graduate earnings are not as lucrative as they once were. By under taking a salary checker exercise, Futuretracker found that graduate salary premium was down 2% per year compared with average national earnings over the past ten years.
The caveat to this was that there is some variance between the degree studied for and the employment prospects of graduates and the careers they pursued. Those studying and entering the professions such as medicine, finance and law on the whole found it relatively easy to find well paid employment. Likewise, the buoyant IT industry in the UK meant many graduates have found well paid IT jobs.
It is those graduates who studied for arts based subjects who have found it harder to secure well paid graduate roles. Many previous destinations for arts subjects such as the civil service and charities have radically scaled back their recruitment activity.
The positive news is that despite all this negativity, 96% of all the graduates surveyed were still glad they did a degree. They believe that without a degree, they would find it even more difficult to break into the world of work.
Image source: http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1402099