…AND MORE THAN A THIRD HAVEN’T EVEN USED THEIR CAREERS SERVICE
Less than half of students say their university has met their expectations in helping them prepare for life after graduation – and more than a third say they haven’t even used their university careers service. As hundreds of thousands of young people face a hostile jobs market and a gloomy economic climate in 2013, Graduate Fog sees this as a shocking failure on the part of the higher education institutions, many of which charge young people tens of thousands of pounds for their degree.
The appalling results came from a new report by GTI, which surveyed 2,300 students at 125 universities. It found that only 48% of students answered “Yes” to the question: “Has your university met your expectations in terms of the help it provides to prepare you for life after university?” A quarter (25%) said “No”, 18% said “I don’t know” and 10% said “I didn’t have any expectations.” The report appeared to gloss over these findings, saying only this:
“Nearly half of respondents felt that the university met their expectations in this regard, although a quarter didn’t and there was a sizeable number yet to form a view.”
On the under-use of university careers services, the report simply said:
“Student use of the careers service is high, with 64% of all respondents saying they had used it either in person or online. This is a small but significant increase compared to six years ago when the figure was 58%. This does leave more than a third who have not used their careers service, of course.”
Hello? Is this small jump in six really something “significant” that universities should be congratulating themselves for? That the proportion of young people who use their careers service has gone up by a measly 6% in as many years, even against a backdrop of some of the fiercest competition ever for graduate jobs? Because to Graduate Fog that sounds like a pretty poor effort. Even when the figures are studied again – looking just at final year students – the proportion who used their service was only 73%. Which means that over a quarter of final year students hadn’t used their careers service.
More embarrassment for the universities was yet to come, as it also emerged that vital information about what employers look for in their young recruits is simply not reaching students. Almost half of students (47%) said they had had no contact at all with potential employers – a major mistake, as readers of Graduate Fog know. Only 29% of respondents realised that commercial awareness is “very important” and only 41% had twigged that contacts are “very important”. Why aren’t crucial messages like this getting through to young people? University careers services are forever whining about cuts to their budgets and the difficulties with encouraging young people to think about their career before they graduate. But this does not fit with our experience at Graduate Fog. We know that undergraduates – and graduates – are seriously worried about their futures, and they want to find out about what happens after graduation. It just needs to be presented in the rights way. Our conclusion is that careers services are doing a terrible job of attracting, engaging and assisting the young people they are paid to help.
Whenever we raise questions like these, universities retaliate by asking us what evidence we have that they are doing such a bad job. But these figures don’t lie. And Graduate Fog is still frequently asked basic questions like “What should I do if I don’t know what career I want?”, “What should I do if I haven’t got on to any of the big graduate schemes?”, “Are unpaid internships legal?” and “Should I do further study just to try and wait out the recession?” This is basic, basic stuff. Why don’t graduates know it? If university careers services are doing such a fantastic job, why are these questions still coming?
*DID YOU USE YOUR UNIVERSITY CAREERS SERVICE?
Were you impressed with the advice they provided? Are you surprised that less then half of students said that their service was helpful? What sort of help did they give you – and was it what you wanted?
NOTE TO USERS: This headline for this post “Less than half of students find their uni careers service helpful” has been changed since it was first published. Thanks to the readers who pointed out that it was almost accurate, but not quite.
That’s an extraordinary and partial interpretation of the report Tanya. The headline: “Less than half of students say their careers service is helpful” is actually WRONG as the question related to how helpful their university was. And do you really think that 73% of final years using their careers service is a bad stat????
I think I should stop here before I have a fit as writing a shamefully misleading headline is symptomatic, I’m afraid, of a writer who has already formed a view, despite the evidence of the report.
For everybody else, please read the report and make up your own mind!
Tanya, so unlike you to put a negative spin on things (not!!). A positive take on this one wouldn’t really help book sales though would it??
I’m not going to leap to the defence of University Careers Services wholesale, and I think my posting history on this site indicates that I’m prepared to criticise them where appropriate. But I do have issues with the way aspects of this story have been written.
Firstly, the question asked was “Has your university met your expectations in terms of the help it provides to prepare you for life after university?” yet you interpret this as “Less than half of university students say their careers service has met their expectations in helping them prepare for life after graduation”. It’s important not to confuse a question that asked about the University experience as a whole as being solely about the Careers Service.
Also, you ask “Is this small jump in six really something “significant” that universities should be congratulating themselves for?”. If this is referring to the working in the report, this was written by GTI, who are independent from universities, so I’m not sure I see the connection.
Above all though, I do find it frustrating that once more Graduate Fog seems to be reporting on Careers Services as if they are all the same. The truth is that there are excellent ones, mediocre ones, and downright poor ones. And even within a particular University, students’ experience of and exposure to the Careers Service will vary – for example at my own University I know we do far more work with some subjects than others, and often this is down to the willingness of individual tutors to give over class time for us to come in and run careers sessions. So there are variations both between institutions, and within them. Like Chris, I’d encourage everyone to read the full report, which you’ve linked to within the story.
I do agree that the finding that a third of students haven’t used their Careers Service is a deeply worrying one. I also agree that where there are problems, Careers Services need to take responsibility for them and look for ways to address them, not moan about budget cuts etc.
However, I do think it would help the overall aim of improving Careers Service provision in Universities if Graduate Fog could bring greater nuance to the way it reports on these matters, including acknowledging that Careers Services don’t operate in a ‘bubble’ completely seperate from the wider university. Giving Uni Careers Servuices a blanket kicking makes great copy – but in the long run I don’t think it’s the best way to address the genuine issues & problems that exist at some Careers Services in some Universities.
“I do agree that the finding that a third of students haven’t used their Careers Service is a deeply worrying one. I also agree that where there are problems, Careers Services need to take responsibility for them and look for ways to address them, not moan about budget cuts etc.”
I was part of that third. And it doesn’t concern me that I never visit my careers service.
Employability would likely not be in my top three reasons to be at Uni (maybe top 10).
I went to Uni because I wanted a degree. If I came out with employability skills, then bonus! However, I plain and simple was there for my desire to obtain a prestigious academic award. And then a masters degree.
I did it and I was happy with that. I have a job, but even if I didn’t I wouldn’t resent my University for it. I believe people need to take more responsibility for their employability skills. I had a consistent part-time job for 5 years. It helped tremendously.
Poor journalism from a Liz Jones wannabe
@CD
Absolutely, there will always be students for whom our services are not relevant, or who have other priorities. But I do think in the vast majority of cases, whatever a student wants to do after their course, there is usually something we can do to assist. That’s why I think it’s so important that all students have at least some exposure to their Careers Service while at Uni, so they can decide if it is something that can help them. From my own experience, having receieved poor Careers Advice at school, I spent the majority of University assuming that the Careers Service there would be equally rubbish, and only at the last moment did I discover this wasn’t the case.
I’d also echo what you say about part-time work – it’s value definitely shouldn’t be underestimated.
Sorry this post hasn’t proved popular with the careers community – I’m stunned ; )
@Tanya: I’m not part of the careers community, and I think it’s quite a negative spin on what looks to me like an overall reasonably positive report.
@Tanya
I wonder if you could respond to some of the points that have been made re: the interpretation of the report, especially the point about the question which asked about the university as a whole being translated as being solely about the Careers Service.
It would also be useful to have a more in-depth discussion about the specific areas where you feel Careers Services are falling short and how these might be addressed.
Marketeers know you have to build awareness of a product / service before prospective customers are likely to “buy” it. It can take a lot of time, expertise and money to build awareness, also to build relationships with customers’ “influencers”.
University careers services have less than the duration of a degree course to create that awareness as regards individual undergraduates and they genuinely are under-resourced (both as regards staff time and finance).
University careers services also start with the problem that most of the general public (especially the more able students and parents)haven’t a clue what professional careers advisors do and haven’t had any significant contact with them.
Graduate Fog – the daily mail of graduate careers (mis)information!
The lack of a balanced response from Graduate Fog does not reflect well.
Not relevant to this conversation but was so PLEASED to hear the news I just had to share it!
Cait Reilly has won her case against DWP, ie that the government was wrong to force her into working unpaid for Poundland or lose her benefit, her only income. The HGV lorry driver taking a similar case won his too.
Government plans to appeal to the Supreme Court but as of now, its workfare scheme is in tatters. Good news for the taxpayer as well as unemployed claimants – people put on the Work Programme were less likely to find employment afterwards than those who’d been left to do their own job search.
Excellent news indeed – well done Cait and Jamie (the HGV driver).
NOTE TO USERS: This headline for this post “Less than half of students find their uni careers service helpful” has been changed since it was first published. Thanks to the readers who pointed out that it was almost accurate, but not quite.
A degree is not worth £9000 a year. Its an absolute joke.
I found my uni careers service to be no help at all. There were never enough appointments available and the few available would fill up weeks in advance (so I never actually got to use an interview prep appointment as the time between being told I had an interview and the interview date didn’t allow for me to wait weeks for an appointment.
When I wanted to find out how to convert to English law course they didn’t have a clue and I had to figure it all out by myself. When I explained my difficulties finding a law training contract the adviser asked if I tried sending my cv to local firms (yes, I’ve been doing that every year since first year and it’s got me nowhere) and have I considered being a paralegal even though I’d told her already that every single job advert I’ve seen says you must have years of experience (so the usual experience catch 22). This left her stumped so I was just told me to look on some generic careers websites. I do actually know how to use google and didn’t need a careers appointment to figure that out! So frustrating…
@Naomi
That’s because the careers service at many institutions is rubbish. It amounts to spouting canned generic wisdom that doesn’t work in the current environment. It is in the same vein as the delusional optimism that is inculcated into teenagers to get them into uni courses: that if you try hard enough then you will get to where you want to be. The real world doesn’t work like that because there are all kinds of factors working for and against you.
Law is an extremely difficult area to stay in because so many people are chasing so few jobs. This isn’t just the case for law, but there seem to be a lot of very basic poor quality jobs that amount to nothing more than running errands, photocopying, answering the phone for very low wages with no progression offered. The better opportunities require specific experience of a specific duration doing particular things, which you aren’t likely to have because not many people will offer since it costs money. This is the true source of the problem. There isn’t any desire or ability to actually invest in people to the extent that is needed.