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.

If you signed up to a university degree without knowing the steps you need to become a (solicitor?), that's on you, OP, what university law page doesnt have this already?
The information you need to make that decision is already out there. I know you keep saying its across different sources or various pages of the uni website, but that is part and parcel of researching the career you want, and realistically the best sources of that information are not going to be the university, but the industry you want to enter, so the Law Society's page that details every step and cost to become a solicitor.

Can you give an actual example of a course that you think the university doesn't provide sufficient information about?

I do not think providing clearer information before a student commits is “lazy”.
At the moment, information can be scattered. Some may be in a prospectus, some on university webpages, some with professional bodies and some elsewhere. A prospective student may not even know where to begin looking, particularly before they have enrolled or paid anything.

Universities already produce prospectuses, so the key information could be included there or clearly signposted.

There can also be a real emotional impact afterwards if someone has committed years of their life and significant money, only to discover important further requirements, costs or employment realities they did not properly understand at the start.

This is not asking universities to find students jobs. It is simply asking for clearer information before the commitment is made.

We do find it helpful and there's a kind of quid pro quo in that we give students references and they tell us what jobs they get.

OP every single university undergraduate course web page has a link to the DiscoverUni dataset which tells them everything, from fees to assessment methods to the percentage in professional employment and average salary. On every single course page. I mean how clearly signposted do you want? Personalised carrier pigeon?

Maybe they think they should get sent an owl?

Information on what though?! It’s all already there!!

As for putting it into prospectuses. Are you having a laugh? How on earth can a university put information about thousands of different career options in a bloody prospectus!!
Imagine the size and the cost 😂

A lot of the OPs issues could be solved if their child just spoke to their school or college careers adviser.

Well, I am glad you have read through the thread closely enough to notice what I have been saying.

Law was only one example. The petition is not about law alone. There are many universities, many courses and many different career routes.

It is also worth remembering that university students are not all 18 year olds coming straight from school. Students can be of many different ages and backgrounds, including mature students and people changing careers later in life.

My main point is not that information never exists. It is that it can be scattered across prospectuses, different university webpages, professional bodies, careers websites and other sources. A prospective student may not even know which information they need to look for or which questions they need to ask.
And it is not only about qualifications. It is also about the reality of getting into work afterwards.

Take law as one example. Someone may understand that a law degree can lead towards becoming a solicitor, but they should also understand clearly before committing that the degree itself does not make them a solicitor, that there are further stages, experience requirements and costs, and that actually entering the profession can be highly competitive.

The same principle applies more widely. Prospective students should have a realistic picture not only of the degree itself, but of what may be required afterwards and what recent graduate employment outcomes actually look like.
I am not asking universities to find students jobs, guarantee employment or predict the future. I am asking for the important information that is already known to be made clearer and easier to find before someone commits years of their life and significant money.

Students should absolutely research further. But clear information from the university and independent research are not mutually exclusive. The point is to give people a better understanding of what they are going into while they still have a genuine choice.

but they should also understand clearly before committing that the degree itself does not make them a solicitor
There is no a university in the uk that doesnt make this clear on their website already

is also worth remembering that university students are not all 18 year olds coming straight from school. Students can be of many different ages and backgrounds, including mature students and people changing careers later in life.
They should have even more common sense then to work backwards from the job they want.

what recent graduate employment outcomes actually look like.
every university lists this already

Yes. I do have a specific example.

I am currently setting it out in an article which is going through the final response and publication stage, so I am not going to pre empt that here. Once it is published, I will be able to point people to the full example and the supporting material.

The petition itself is wider than one university or one course. The issue is whether prospective students are given a sufficiently clear picture of the full route, further requirements, costs and realistic employment prospects before they commit.

When the article is published, I will be happy to share it here.

I've just looked at the LLB pages where I work. The first thing it tells applicants is that this degree is the first stage on your journey towards a career in law and will prepare you to move on to apply for SQE or the BVC qualification. It is transparent that you need further qualifications to become a solicitor or barrister. It also details other career paths that recent graduates have taken using their law degree.
I teach a different discipline and one of the degrees is a professional course that allows people to register with our regulator and join the profession. Other degrees teach similar topics but do not lead to the professional qualification and we clearly state that on the web pages. We are also transparent in stating that if you do these degrees and want to become x,y,z you will need to go on and take a masters that qualifies you to become x,y,z. We publish our graduate destination information detailing the types of employment and further study people move into. We are not unique in doing this. The information is there and every year people start a course and leave because they thought they had signed up to the professional qualification. We haven't misled them in any way, they just haven't read any of the advice/careers/employment information we provide - which is all on the same page as the course information.

If you don't understand before starting a Law degreee that further training is needed before you become a solicitor, then you probably aren't going to make a very good one.

We now have a thing called AI. It means you don't have to spend ages filtering through multiple sources because it does the hard work for you. If you're not using AI, but only some lovely university curated information like you are suggesting, you are limiting yourself, in the same way that 20 (or is it 30?) years go someone just researching using a physical book rather than the internet would be restricting themselves.

Most crucially, at the point where they are researching universities and degrees a prospective student is at least 4 years away from graduating. My DD is just about to go into her 3rd year. I can tell you that any information that would have been available to her before she put in her UCAS application is now wildly irrelevant.

For the third time, EVERY UNI COURSE PAGE HAD A LINK TO DISCOVERUNI WHICH GIVES THEM THE DETAILS FOR THAT COURSE THAT YOU ARE ASKING FOR.

<And breathe>

University isn't just about career preparation. When my DC or their friends were choosing university and courses, future careers were not part of the mix. Brand or cachet of the uni, whether they would find it stimulating and interesting and whether they would like living in that place, yes.

Surely that is up to the prospective student to research?

I really hope you haven't spent much time on this. So far you have 21 signatures.

If I were taking on the level of debt that an undergraduate degree can attract, you can bet your life I'd be researching it thoroughly and across every platform I could find. Why would I not?

Yes, I am aware that Prospects exists and that it has existed for at least 20 years. That is not the point I have been making.

If you had read through my posts properly, you would also have seen that I have referred repeatedly to university prospectuses and to information being spread across different sources.

Prospects is one useful source. A university prospectus is another. University webpages are another. Professional bodies, careers services and industry websites may contain other parts of the picture.

That is exactly the issue. The information can be spread across different places, and a prospective student may not even know which pieces they need to find or what questions they need to ask before committing.

Prospects does not contain everything about every individual university course, every professional route, every further requirement, every cost or the employment reality connected with that course.

I am not asking universities to find students jobs, guarantee employment or predict the future. I am asking for the important information that is already known to be brought together more clearly, or at least clearly signposted, before someone commits years of their life and significant money.

So yes, Prospects has been around for 20 years. Its existence does not disprove my point. If anything, pointing to yet another separate source rather neatly demonstrates it.

OP you don’t understand what “research it themselves” means - it means finding the information they need from different sources. As PP says, with AI you don’t even need to do that now - just Google “what do I need to do to become a lawyer in England?” Or whatever. Good grief.

If someone is unable to bring together information from different sources then they are not going to be able to produce any assignments for their degree.

The full route and further requirements of what though? This is the bit of your argument which makes no sense!

The cost of a degree is clearly set out on every university website, often in multiple places.

How are you going to predict employment prospects. I know the person who does that for the government and even he caveats every bit of data with the fact that this can be difficult to predict. All we can do is look at historical data and make predictions based on those as well as government spending, technological innovation and geopolitics - all of which are unpredictable at the moment.

Thank you, that explains how some universities may gather information about what graduates go on to do.

It does not really address the point I am making, though, which is about what prospective students are told before they enrol and become financially committed.

Hello!!!!!!! Read my posts. The information you want to see exists on every single course page. One link. One click. Everything you’ve asked for. Maybe YOUR research skills need honing?

Discover Uni is useful, and I have never suggested otherwise. But even Discover Uni itself tells applicants to consider its data alongside other course and university information
.
It does not contain every professional route, further examination, experience requirement, additional cost or employment reality for every individual course, and some of its data may even be at subject level rather than for that particular course.

So a link to Discover Uni does not really answer my point. It is another useful source of information, but the student may still have to piece the full picture together from several places.

No personalised carrier pigeon required. Just clearer information before someone commits years of their life and significant money.

Or ignore me and everyone else and make public tit of yourself - up to you 🤷‍♀️