Hard evidence about the relationship between higher education choices and experience, and access to opportunities in restructuring global labour markets
Monday 21 October 2013 2:30-4pm. Venue: Barbara Falk room, CSHE, Lvl 1, 715 Swanston St., Carlton, Melbourne. Registration: lachlan.doughney@unimelb.edu.au.
Professor Kate Purcell, Institute for Employment research, University of Warwick, UK.
Abstract
Which graduates get good jobs and who ends up under-employed, and why?  Is the concept of ‘graduate employability’ useful, or is it a dangerous distraction from the attempt to understand the relationships between HE expansion and economic restructuring?  These questions will be addressed using data from the Futuretrack national longitudinal study of people who applied in 2005/06 to commence full-time undergraduate degree programmes, covering all UK HEIs and including UK, EU and other overseas applicants.  This presentation will draw predominantly on the Stage 4 data, collected 18-30 months after completion of first (Bachelors) degree programmes (depending on whether students were enrolled on 3 or 4 year programmes of study), to examine the relationship between subjects studied, knowledge and skills acquired, extent of work experience as undergraduates and early career outcomes.  What is a graduate job, and what are the implications of these findings?
Bio
Kate, Director of the biggest-ever UK investigation of the relationship between higher education and employment – the Futuretrack study -  is a sociologist who has researched and written the relationship between higher education and employment, combining quantitative and qualitative analysis, for over 20 years.
See http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/ier/research/graduate/ for details of recent projects.

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