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 should do this themselves before signing up .
its not the university’s responsibility

This information is very easy to find . Ds and dd both did their own research before deciding on what degree to do. This is up to the student to do this research, not the universities .

ds knew he had 3 years of professional work and exams to do to become chartered after completing his degree.

I’m sorry, I understand where this is coming from, given the high cost of student debt and the current difficult jobs market where apparently about 40% of graduates under 30 are in non-graduate level jobs. But having this kind of rigid route map with regard to degrees and employment is totally impractical, given the number of variables involved.

Bad sign if the student can’t do their own research.

Frankly if you are doing a law, medicine or journalism degree and you need someone to tell you the career path, it probably isn't for you! I agree with everyone else. Most degrees lead to lots of different careers. It's up to students and parents to look into these things before committing to the degree.

This just further commodifies learning
It’s bad enough already

Hi, OP. We've moved your thread to our Petitions topic now.

The data is out there giving indications of the proportion of graduates who end up employed (in graduate roles and none graduate roles) from different university courses and the type of employment by degree and the typical salaries by degree , and I think there is data also on how many end up in roles related to their degrees eg Sciences - high, fashion design - low.

if you want to follow a specific career path it’s up to you to research the requirements and the typical profiles of professionals in your desired field

as a graduate I see no obligation to keep my old university informed of my career

Firstly, universities do provide information on what you can do with their degrees and publish a lot of information on what careers their graduates go on to work in.

Secondly, Every year there is a report published call ‘What do graduates do’ which is a sector level analysis with information presented on a subject level.

Thirdly, in the UK a very high percentage of graduates jobs don’t require a specific subject. They just look for a degree.

And fourthly, universities all have a Careers and Employability service who are there to support students with what to do with their degree. They study the ever changing labour market so have the most up to date knowledge and information. It’s not a statutory requirement to provide this service but every single university has one.

This is a completely pointless petition as all of this information already exists and is available for prospective and current students.
If a student can’t find this information then I’d suggest university isn’t for them.

This is a completely pointless petition as all of this information already exists and is available for prospective and current students.

I agree. This is a pointless petition.

You may regard it as pointless, but others who are making decisions about university and career routes may not.
The petition was considered and accepted for publication by the UK Parliament petitions system. It is now there for people to read and decide for themselves whether they support what it is asking for.
It asks for clearer information before students commit years of their lives and significant money to a degree, including the full career route, further requirements and realistic job prospects.
The information is there now. I simply hope that anyone making that decision in future takes the opportunity to read it before committing, rather than only realising afterwards that there were things they would have wanted to know beforehand.

Students absolutely should research before choosing what to study, but that does not remove the responsibility of universities to provide clear and complete information about the route they are selling.

A prospective student cannot reasonably be expected to research a requirement they do not know exists or ask a question they do not know they need to ask.
That is the point of the petition. Students should still do their own research, but the university should clearly explain before enrolment what the degree does and does not qualify them to do, what further steps may be required, and what the realistic employment prospects are.

Informed choice works best when both sides have the relevant information.

I agree that students should research before signing up. My point is that personal research and clear information from the university are not mutually exclusive.

A prospective student may not know which additional requirements, professional stages or experience requirements they need to investigate. The petition is about making that information clearer before the financial and educational commitment is made.

You may regard it as pointless, but others who are making decisions about university and career routes may not.

The petition was considered and accepted for publication by the UK Parliament petitions system. It is now there for people to read and decide for themselves whether they support what it is asking for.

It asks for clearer information before students commit years of their lives and significant money to a degree, including the full career route, further requirements and realistic job prospects.

The information is there now. I simply hope that anyone making that decision in future takes the opportunity to read it before committing, rather than only realising afterwards that there were things they would have wanted to know beforehand.

“It asks for clearer information before students commit years of their lives and significant money to a degree, including the full career route, further requirements and realistic job prospects.”

But the Information is already in the public domain, as suggested by the links I listed above.

Plus, there’s no linear route following a degree. A subject could open the doors to a vast spectrum of opportunities.

It asks for clearer information before students commit years of their lives and significant money to a degree, including the full career route, further requirements and realistic job prospects.

But you're asking for information about what realistic job prospects there might be in five years or so. No-one can tell you that. They can only give you information about what job prospects there were some time in the past.

And 'full career' route? What career? Unless you're taking a vocational degree, a degree doesn't lead to any specific career. And even a nursing degree, for example, could lead in all sorts of different directions.

They’ll accept a petition for pretty much anything though. That’s not a marker of the quality of the petition.

Honestly, it just reads like you’ve not bothered to see if that information exists already or to understand how university and the labour market interact.
Many young people go to university not having a clear, mapped out career plan. And that’s perfectly okay - university is a great opportunity to explore and develop those ideas with a significant amount of support.

As other people have mentioned, degrees can lead to literally 100’s of careers, some of which don’t even exist yet. Mapping very specific career paths to degrees would actually be detrimental. It risks limiting people’s horizons.
Employers wouldn’t be a fan of this either.

Students should actually look at what careers and employability support is available, what opportunities are there to gain work experience and what links the university has with employers both nationally and internationally. That would be far more beneficial.

I spend a lot of time researching and supporting people making decisions about university. There is more than enough information available, there are no gaps or information that is hidden. But students need to access it themselves. That’s a very important skill and one which will set them up for university study. Careers advisers and universities themselves can help young access this information easily.

Can you provide evidence that universities are not providing clear information about their courses?
Because there is already legislation around this and universities are found by CMA requirements and have to provide information on course routes, modules, contact time, employability statistics etc.
What they can’t do is tell you what you’ll do after your degree. That is not within the universities control.

@LyndallMaystudents should absolutely be doing career and financial research before signing up… if you are incapable of finding out this information. Then you honestly, should reconsider your university degree.

There are graduate outcome surveys where students say what career they're in a year and three years after completion and the results of those are publicly available. Along with dozens of other data sets about various attributes of each university and how they compare.

If the student can't be arsed to do their own research then it's certainly not down to the university. The person is an individual. How can an institution tell a stranger what they will and won't be doing in several years time?

OP it sounds like you or a young person have done a degree you thought would lead directly straight into a career (law?), but did not research properly and appreciate the extra steps required (to become a barrister?)

If students and their families/support system can’t find out this information for themselves then I am. It sure they should be applying for a course.

It’s lazy to expect universities to provide this information rather than find it for themselves.
Also this is a waste of universities money, which we know that they are under increasing pressure financially, and spending money to do this means that valuable money/resources are diverted away from actually teaching.

So you want a university History department to say on the website.

This does not qualify you to be a doctor that needs a different degree.

This does not qualify you to be a lawyer you need to do further study.

This does not qualify you to be a teacher you need to do further study.

And so on for multiple professions.

In my profession it would be pointless telling a 17 year old that a degree course would give them X exemptions from their choice of 3 professional qualifications. It is entirely down to the professional body whether or not they accept a particular module as being worthy of an exemption and the exam papers change and evolve on a regular basis. A module sat in Oct 2027 may no longer be professionally valid in 2030 or beyond.

I appreciate that your children were able to find the information they needed and make informed decisions.

My point is not that students should not do research. It is about making sure people understand the realistic route before they commit years of their lives and significant money to a degree.

Some important information may only become clear after a student has enrolled, paid fees, gained access to internal course information or spoken to a careers adviser. By then, the commitment has already been made.

There can also be a real emotional impact when graduates begin applying for work and discover that roles described as entry level may still require previous experience, further qualifications or other steps they had not fully understood before starting the degree.

There is nothing wrong with starting at the bottom. The issue is whether someone who is considering spending years obtaining a degree understands beforehand what that degree will and will not qualify them to do and what the realistic route afterwards may involve.
That is not an argument against university. It is about informed choice while the student still has a genuine choice.