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.

this simply doesn’t map in any meaningful way to most degree subjects. The diverse range of careers - just the ones I know of - from my undergrad chemistry cohort will have required a very diverse range of subsequent qualifications/training. Which everyone somehow managed to navigate even before the wealth of info easily accessible on the internet. Many future career pathways are currently unknown - we don’t know exactly how science and technology is going to develop.

I am not suggesting that an individual professor should personally map out every student’s career.

The petition is about the university as an institution providing clearer information before enrolment about what a degree does and does not qualify someone to do, any known further requirements, and realistic employment information
.
Universities may be academic institutions, but students are still committing years of their lives and significant money. Clear information before that commitment is not the same as turning a university into a vocational college.

And if you are speaking here as a professor, calling someone “love” in a dismissive way is hardly a professional response to a reasonable discussion about prospective students and informed choice.

@LyndallMayare you going to respond to any of my questions?
Should your petition be successful, what you’re proposing would become part of my job. Other academics, student recruitment teams and career development professionals are likely to have similar concerns that I do. Surely you should be prepared and willing to engage with people who would be the ones implementing this?

Some people do know exactly what career they want first, but many do not. University students come from different ages, backgrounds and circumstances.

The petition is simply about making sure the important information is clear before they commit, whichever way round they make that decision.

If you think that this is a problem then shouldn’t Sixth Form and colleges be giving out this info before uni applications are made? For example they might suggest applying to a certain uni which also has a masters programme or a year in business.

I think that yabu btw. If a student doesn’t look up the career path of say a solicitor or can’t find the info online then they are not really capable of higher education.

I think that employability stats are already provided by many institutions and if they aren’t by a uni that you’re considering then it’s worth asking.

It’s difficult to provide career advice for a specific degree when many jobs don’t require a specific degree. For example I worked at a tech startup where the degrees varied from drama to physics. Plus there’s they added complication that many students are from overseas so their data may be unavailable and not give a good idea about next steps.

Students are committing years of their life and tens of thousands of pounds at university to earn a degree. That's what the university does. A university does not offer students a career. That's what employers do.

The National Careers Service is useful, but it is another separate source, which rather illustrates my point that students may have to piece information together from different places.

The petition is not asking universities to guarantee jobs or promise a particular career. It is asking them to make important known information clearer before someone commits.

Universities may be under financial pressure, but that does not mean prospective students should bear the consequences of unclear information when they are the ones investing years of their life and significant money.

Well with the exception of medicine, some allied health degrees and initial teacher training, no degree qualifies you for anything. So presumably a disclaimer on every website that ‘this degree by itself does not qualify you for a specific career’ will be fine then?

But it will be individual professors/course leaders/heads of departments who will have to do what you’re suggesting.

I have responded to your points several times.

I am happy to engage with genuine implementation concerns, but the petition is not asking academics to guarantee careers or personally map out every student’s future. It is asking universities to make important known information clearer before students commit.

If the petition progresses, the detail of implementation would be for the relevant bodies and institutions to consider. I have explained the principle I am asking for, and I am not going to keep repeating the same answers.

As others have already noted, most courses lead to many and varied careers or further studies. This information is already available on university sites. There is no guarantee of a specific job with any degree. Those who follow vocational degrees will also often end up in different careers or further study.

History is a great example. Not many people study history to go into Heritage, plus you almost always need an Masters, and probably a Phd, and then are paid minimum wage anyway. You do it because you love it, not because of great prospects. But History is a degree which opens up many career opportunities, so many different ones, having the information in detail would be meaningless, because you can basically do anything.

The onus is on the student to research before they commit.
They should know that degree x is not a guarantee of y through their research reading etc
A degreee may be a goal in itself to grow and hopefully gain some more critical thinking skills!

I understand that a university is offering a degree, not promising somebody a career or a job. That is not what the petition is asking for.

I am not asking universities to provide employment or guarantee that an individual graduate will get a particular job.

I am asking for clear and recent information about graduate employment prospects, including the reality of entering the job market and where entry level roles may require previous experience.

The petition also asks for prospective students to understand what the degree does and does not qualify them to do, and any known further training, examinations, professional requirements, work experience, time and costs.
When someone is committing years of their life and significant money to a degree, I think it is reasonable that they are given that information clearly before they commit.

That is not confusing a degree with a guaranteed career. It is about informed choice.

Could it be that the reason you're being asked the same questions over and over is because your answers are so vague as to be useless? And that this is exacerbated by the single example you're basing this all on is a secret?

I sort of assumed that a person clever enough to go to university would know how to use Google and do basic research.

But times are changing though. The fact is degrees used to just be free for a small number of people to do elite higher education. Then more people did them and jobs were readily available for people with degrees which were seen as prestigious.

they are now long longer prestigious but merely a required part of getting pretty much any job these days. People are doing them because they have to not because they necessarily want to. Aside from people who truly want to go into academia or those doing vocational degrees such as medicine, They are now simply a tick box part of a job application process. As a result I do think universities now should be actively involved with careers, forming partnerships with institutions, helping students get internist’s and degrees. This should be a selling point that the universities use to attract students.

OP you obviously feel this is needed because you or someone you know has been caught out, as you feel they weren’t given the full information.

Can you give us this specific example.

Can you link a uni course that doesn’t do what you want and what more you think will help.

You created a petition because you feel so strongly about this and want others to sign it but you’re being quite vague about your own experiences and specific examples of where this isn’t happening.

This would be something I fully support but IME unis already do this.

I have answered you already and I have nothing further to add on that point.

So maybe what we need are careers departments in schools that can provide information on careers, so kids choosing degrees can find out about prospective courses and possible careers, or if they want to become e a solicitor, how to become one. Oh wait, we already have them.

It may help with vocational type degrees (law, engineering etc) but many degrees have no clear career path the the possibilities are endless. Surely it’s the students responsibility? My DD decided against studying animation after she did her research, including taking a course at CSM and asking the teachers who taught it at graduate level, looking up credits of animations she liked and finding vast amounts of very talented artists with terrific reels on Instagram who were looking for work. Result? It’s very tough out there, most work is freelance, and much of the type of animation she liked was created abroad. Though it’s true that the art unis she visited did go on about how ‘creative careers cannot be replaced’ well we know how wrong that is! Yes nothing can replace original unique work, but the public are quite happy to consume AI created work, and that’s where the money is.

If an adult at university cannot work this out as so many pp have said, I doubt they could manage a degree or the type of job they want

Earlier you wrote:

If someone is entering into a major contract, you would expect the important terms to be made clear before they agree. You would not normally say, “some of the important information is elsewhere, go and find it yourself.”

The contract you sign with a university is about the degree course. All the Important information about that course is available. "Important information" about future career prospects after you leave university make up no part of that contract because that's not what the university is offering. You do not seem to understand that distinction but it's an important one.

This is not persuasive and falls at the first hurdle. If you are considering incurring a debt of £50,000, it is entirely reasonable that you would spend time 'piecing the information together'. It's not hard. A 17-year old incapable of researching separate sources, summarising them, and drawing conclusions is going to struggle massively as an independent learner at university. It's another example of teenagers being spoon-fed.

There is no good argument for universities to bear the costs of doing this, along with TEF, REF, graduate destinations etc etc. If I buy a kilo of leeks from Tesco, I don't expect Tesco to give me a list of everything I might do with them. It's my job to look up recipes myself. Similarly, if I borrow money to buy a house, the onus is not on the buyer to inform me of the risks. It's on me to seek out information by commissioning a surveyor.

The issue your petition endeavours to address is a trivial one. The big issues that need addressing are the mismatch between degrees, graduates and the labour market; the fragmented system for post-18 options other than higher education; and undergraduate degree funding.

Up to students to think about what they are interested in now and future.

A) universities already do put effort in to building relationships with potential employers. This is why so many courses offer placements.

B) it's not what the OP is banging on about