Should universities give clearer information on degree career routes and prospects?

[LyndallMay]

Parents of university students or applicants, would you have wanted to know this before they chose their degree?
I have started a UK Parliament petition asking universities to give prospective students clearer information before they enrol or become financially committed.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/776439
Require universities to explain degree career routes and job prospects
The petition asks for students to be told about the full career route connected with a degree, including what the degree does and does not qualify them to do, any further training, examinations, professional requirements, work experience, time and costs.
It also asks for clear and recent information about realistic graduate employment prospects, including where entry level roles may require previous experience.
This is not about guaranteeing anybody a job or discouraging people from university. It is about giving students the full picture while they still have a genuine choice about their degree and career route.
If you agree, I would be very grateful if you would sign and share it.
IMPORTANT: After signing, please check your email and click the confirmation link sent by UK Parliament. Otherwise your signature will not be recorded.

I think students could be doing this themselves when choosing what to study.

No, this is not the responsibility of Universities. The information is out there, it is up to students to do their research.

Perhaps for professional-linked courses such as Law, journalism or Medicine, but not for academic courses.

How on Earth does a University know what a degree in history “does and does not qualify them to do, any further training, examinations, professional requirements, work experience, time and costs.” There are a million careers a history graduate might be suitable for.

Students can find out this info on their own. They should be doing that anyway.

as others have said this is something for students to find out on their own and best suited that way really. unis couldn’t possibly list all of what you are asking for as there are so many different jobs they can lead too.

There’s lots of information out there already. Here’s just a few sites, that took me all of two minutes to find.

https://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/league-tables/rankings?sortby=graduate-prospects

https://www.prospects.ac.uk

https://discoveruni.gov.uk/how-do-i-choose-course/employment-prospects/

https://www.studentcrowd.com/page/best-universities-for-job-prospects

universitycompare.com/rankings/career-opportunities

This isn’t hidden info.

My career path and some of the training I’ve had along the way really didn’t exist before I went to university (science field).

I guess the OP is thinking of specific vocational type qualifications, or some of the degrees which might sound like vocational qualifications but really aren’t. But afaik there’s plenty of info available.

Perhaps for professional-linked courses such as Law, journalism or Medicine,

Even a law, journalism or medical degree can take a graduate in many different directions.

And new career paths open up while existing opportunities decline. By the time a student graduates, things could look very different from what they were when s/he was in Yr12 and considering the future.

Not the universities’ responsibility

Fair out no…. At some point people need to use their own brain cells to find out information. A lot of university is about independent learning and investigating skills so maybe just maybe it can start with kids and parents looking things up themselves without being expected to be spoon fed every little detail.

This is up there with those posts asking schools do to do x, y, z …. When it is something parents should do.

A degree qualifies you for some jobs. Universities can’t be more specific because it all depends on so many factors and most degrees can lead to 100 different jobs.

For most subjects, there aren't just 2or 5 career options, fhere are multitude and there are several ways to get there too. It is absolutely the student and their parents' responsibility to do the research and understand more about the study and career prospects of the chosen degree. And for your information, universities also provide plenty of guidance and support, right from first year. More often than not it is the students who don't engage or pay much attention. There is nothing stopping a student from speaking to their tutors or careers service in uni, right from the outset, to choose relevant part-time jobs that would help their future prospects. Stop creating silly petitions.

How do you expect them to know? There's no onus on the grad to tell their university what they have done with their degree.

It's a degree, not a professional qualification (in most cases). So universities can't really say what it "won't qualify" students to do. But I agree with PP - as a parent of a student about to submit her UCAS form - there's loads of info around about career paths, what % of graduates are employed post degree etc. We should not be spoon feeding our young adults with info so specific that it will be inaccurate pretty much straight away.

Surely the student should research that for themselves.

As a teen I knew I wanted to work in marketing, I wasn't sure about which industry, but I researched courses and chose a business degree that covered marketing, finance, corporate law, product lifecycle etc.

That degree could literally have taken me anywhere. I have course mates who ended up working for big five accountants, running their own businesses, project managers for Cap Gemini, IT sales. One is an NHS hospital manager, another is a school business manager. Each has added more specific training for each role - CIM or Prince2 etc

How is a university supposed to map that out? The skills and knowledge gained from a degree can be applied to a myriad of roles and careers. A degree doesn't provide a guarantee though.

My ds is reading engineering. I know engineers who are now a head teacher and a company secretary for a FTSE 100 company.

Unreasonable. Anyone capable of undertaking study at degree level should be able to find this out for him- or herself.

This is a petition written by someone with no understanding of higher education or universities.

Do today's university age generation need to be spoonfed to this extent. If they're intelligent enough to go to university, they should be intelligent and proactive enough to do their own research.

The expectation that someone else do everything for them is mindboggling.

I'm a lecturer. Our graduates go all kinds of places. The data on that is already available. Many are well connected and walk into finance roles despite their degree having no finance in it. Others go off to charity work, others become baristas etc.

Our target is also now 80% international so presumably you are only referring to the 18-20% of UK students, as the international ones either go back to their home countries where the job markets are completely different or they go onto further study, usually in the US.

No I wouldn’t sign this as it’s the responsibility of the student to find out what their chosen course enables them to do. How does the university know what route all students want to take and list them all.
Also I looked at many university degree courses when my dc were applying and I’m sure all the ones I looked at had a career opportunities or ‘where it can take you’ part.

No, this is the responsibility of the individual and impossible for universities to do completely.
The only exception for me is where a career needs a degree with some form of accreditation, and it should be clear if that is what is offered.

OP you are being unreasonable.

First there are far greater things we need our government and universities to worry themselves about.

Second, if someone is going to spend large sums of money to get a degree then it is their responsibility as the purchaser of that service to understand if it is right for them.

Stop spoonfeeding young people.

Also, I sense this is because your child took a degree that either didn't guarantee them the job they wanted or they needed another qualification.

Studying film studies won’t get you a job in Hollywood straight out of uni most probably.

If you are going to soend all that money on a degree and you don’t know if it will lead to the career you want thats on you.

You don’t buy a vacuum and then take it back because you discover it doesn’t have a handheld element and can’t do under the table. Your research first.

Neither do they seem to understand that career prospects depends on employers, not universities. If HSBC suddenly decides it will only recruit those with a maths degree, how can it be the responsibility of a university to communicate this?

All the information you’re requesting is either already out there, and/or it is up to the student to think it through.

For what it’s worth, a lot of Universities already do a great deal of this during the 3 years. Universities also have careers departments that students can continue to access for 2-3 years after graduation.

As someone who works extremely hard in HE to help other peoples’ children, I‘m tired of University-bashing, whether direct or indirect, and especially when it’s ill-informed.

Universities aren’t perfect organisations and like any there are some crap staff here and there. But the number of hoops and the quantity of metrics and regulations we have to meet is mind boggling.

That includes Graduate Outcomes data and targets. If we don’t meet these many targets, we can be sanctioned by the OFS as part of the TEF.

So before you start being suspicious of Universities, do a little research into how they operate and what goes on there. Many people will be surprised to find a lot of knowledge, and many hardworking staff who are extremely attentive to their students and do a great job for them.

These are young people who are very internet savvy, why don’t they simply google it