The role of Higher Education within the labour market: evidence from - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
The role of Higher Education within the labour market: evidence from four skilled occupations Gerbrand Tholen SKOPE Department of Education University of Oxford ESRC Festival of Science 3 rd of November 2014 St. Annes College, Oxford
ESRC Festival of Science 3rd of November 2014
It’s a sign we just don’t get it that we are even debating whether to keep the 50 per cent target for 18–30-year-old participation; over the next 15 years the leading economies of the world are going to head for 60 per cent and we should too. The idea that other countries have enough students able to benefit from higher education, but we don’t, is just insulting. In truth, this needs to be the first plank of a serious economic growth strategy for the future
David Milliband (2010)
"Although the UK economy is returning to growth, we still face significant challenges to secure future prosperity. There is a persistent productivity gap with international competitors, which has widened since the 2008 recession . Raising the UK’s skill levels through education and training has the potential to improve our economic performance, with gains in productivity and higher value economic activity”
UKCES 2014, p.8
Our vision is a highly educated society in which opportunity is more equal for children and young people no matter what their background or family circumstances. We will do this by raising standards of educational achievement and closing the achievement gap between rich and poor.
Department for Education (2010)
They are the gatekeepers of opportunity and the main pathway into careers in the
professionalised, the role universities play will assume greater importance. Who gets into university, and how they get on once they have left, will have a critical role in determining whether Britain’s sluggish rates of social mobility can be improved
Alan Milburn (2012)
UK competitive internationally
(increase in HE skills and knowledge within the labour force leads to product upgrade/innovation)
performance) rather than ascribed status
graduate careers.
Brennan et al 2004, p.17
You don't need necessarily university degree to perform the job but it helps
“if somebody’s not got a degree that wouldn’t necessarily stand in their way if they were really good at what they did.” “When it comes to computer science and computer technology, you have some people who are naturally gifted, who have a natural problem-solving mind when it comes to programming and coding and software design. You have people who have a natural ability in your so-called bedroom coders and people who’ve done it from a young age. Then you have the people who have tried to learn it through university, and it’s hit and miss, you have some good and some bad. “
Many software engineers are ambivalent about their formal education
“So I can say that when I graduated, I almost knew nothing about how they work in a company.” “I think if I had been just put into a job I wouldn’t have wasted six years, because I think most of what I learned was on the job anyway. “ “ I think anything I learnt at university for that could have been done in perhaps three months. So you look at the three years work and you think well, I could have learnt all that in, you know, a three month course and gone straight in two years earlier kind of thing.”
Relationship between what is taught and what is needed to work is even in relevant courses uneven. This due to the specificity of the work
So they were not getting into too much detail, they were just trying to give us a basis, and it was up to us to you know decide what we really want to do, where to go, what to follow, and it was up to us to elaborate more. (...) So it wasn’t that they were preparing us for the market ... actually the philosophy of the university was let’s say against tying the university too close to the companies. They wanted to keep the environment let’s say company free, and they wanted to give us just ... to give us the notion of things, and not the actual hands-on experience on some specific tools of some companies. (...) I was at a meeting a year or so ago with some universities discussing how they would be attracting students to their agile software development courses. And what they were discussing was fine, but it was clearly driven by marketing considerations rather than equipping these students for ‘the market’.
You need a relevant degree to access, apprenticeships routes are becoming more common
“So for example if we were employing somebody with a degree we’d be looking at somebody with a computer science degree, computer engineering degree, software engineering degree, electronics degree, that kind of thing. We wouldn’t be looking at somebody who’d been studying English literature” “No, I’ve not been asked about my degree possibly since my first job (...)I’ve worked with several people who’ve had degrees but not degrees in related fields. I’ve worked with people who are managing software departments that have degrees in chemical engineering or geography and that kind of thing.”
Career: experience is everything
“Well it matters, it certainly matters in your first job (...) After moving to your second job after that it tends not to matter that much. So after let’s say two or three years of working in the industry it stops being important.” “I've got a brother who's two years younger than me. He went to Southampton University to do electronics and computing and dropped out. (...) Basically he had to retake some of his papers after his first year and then he had to retake his second year and effectively just failed. But he managed to get a job at the Met Office and it was probably only two years until he caught up with the graduates that were taken on at the same time.” “I know you’re not going to like this being in academia, but we don’t particularly choose a particular university or we don’t choose … I mean even if somebody’s not got a degree that wouldn’t necessarily stand in their way if they were really good at what they did.”
Although scientific base is learnt tin HE, the practical aspect of work is mostly learned at work
“I would say 80% of the skills I learnt on the job, because whichever research role you do, there’s a different technique involved, so you can’t possibly learn all of those at university. “ “You do need practice, you know experience to do the job, so you start off pretty slow and gradually skills build up over time like anybody else’s.” “when you do a degree it’s so sort of wide, the range of subjects that you cover, it’s really a basic knowledge and a basic ‘Are you capable of learning new skills, are you capable of thinking outside
goes into too many specifics, cos you to do such a broad range” “ I would say what I learnt at university I very rarely use now.”
Lab experience in course crucial
“If they come straight from university these days they rarely have done much in their lab. So there is
they have done a year in industry.”
“Qualification is one of the first things you look at, it’s a qualifier to get into the process largely.
Once people are in the interview process, then it’s unlikely we would consider their level of
Phds and credential closure
“I think experience is more important than the degree as you sort of work on. But like I say unless you’ve got a PhD, there are only certain sort of levels you can get to within research science in the laboratory.” ”you tend to find in the science industry that if you’re in research and you haven’t got a PhD, there is a certain level that you can get to and that’s it – there’s a bit of a ceiling really. And I had reached that really with doing my previous role, there wasn’t anywhere else I could go” “I was just classed as a research scientist for that whole 7 years. Because I did want to be a senior scientist but I couldn’t because I didn’t have a PhD. (...)” “if you don’t do a PhD you will get to a certain level and you’ll never get above it, if you want to stay in a lab.” “I think I’ve kind of reached the ceiling that my education will allow.”
Phd is becoming the new master
“when I graduated perhaps there were 15% of graduates went on to PhDs, now 50% of graduates going to PhDs. (...) they’ll just be doing the basic work, so quite a lot of you know the donkey work just setting up experiments and then the analysing of them would then be passed on to the people with the PhDs who’ve got the full expertise in actually you know how to read the results and everything like that. “ It is often more difficult to recruit a graduate than it is to recruit a PhD. G: In what way? Whilst a lot of adverts will go out with graduate plus industry experience or something along those lines, we would normally get a PhD applying for the role. So whilst we are not discriminatory in that way, it’s difficult to… it’s quite unusual to have graduates with experience apply for roles. Or even if we… yeah, got graduates, if we specifically want a graduate it is more difficult for us to attract them.
Learn most of it on the job
“It taught me how to research and read, but in terms of in the actual job itself, what I learned at university, in terms of what information I learned at university, it wasn’t really that relevant” “Again I don’t know if that was critical or if I hadn’t done those projects I may have learned those skills anyway on the job.” “how to use Excel was really important, a really important skill. It’s not necessarily something you have to learn at university, but we did a lot of projects with Excel that was actually very helpful at the beginning as well” “But then I think two, three years later, I didn’t see much correlation between what people had studied and how well they did, so a lot of people who say had studied engineering, they were doing very well in terms of their job. They just had a lot more to learn maybe in terms of the technical skills at the outset, but if they were fast learners, if they were good at the job, they weren’t any less successful.”
The role of the professional qualifications
“everyone’s from different backgrounds, but everyone, as soon as they finish university, they all go away and do a course towards the accountancy qualification.”
Access
“My degree was to give me the bare basics of what I need to learn, to be able to walk into someone’s office, shake their hand, have a light conversation about it, and hopefully get a job and learn on the job. “ “I mean a firm like Goldman Sachs usually looks for top degrees from top schools(...) But, you know, I think once you’ve sort of started your career and once you’re a couple of years in, you know you can sort of position yourself and show your ambition and you push certain things that people with top degrees might not do.”
Professional qualification
“They don't look for anything else. You have to be ACC or similar, that's all. And then you have to pass the tests and even for the job that I've just started. “ “ everyone looks at CFA. “
University is useful but not strictly necessary
“here’s no way that you need a degree to start off in a communications department(...)if you’re at an organisation that will invest in you and invest in your professional development, as an 18 year old or a 17 year old, you can definitely do this job” “I mean, the writing of quite wordy essays and dissertations is hugely useful in PR” “I’ve learnt more on my first day at work then I did during my degree” “I sometimes look back and think should I have gone for something a bit more vocational that would have been more useful but I guess writing skills were develop by doing my degree and I still use writing skills now. But I don’t think there’s much more I can see as a direct link from my degree and what I do now. “
One increasingly needs to have a degree in order to access the occupation. A degree is not more than a base
“On paper so many people now are absolutely on a par with each other, if everybody has those qualifications then you tend to look for something else and what else is in there. So yeah, I would absolutely look to work experience and personality and willingness to learn, I think that’s the danger with anybody, and I was subject to actually the same at the time, is that you assume that you’re at the end of your education, whereas you might forget, you absolutely mustn’t forget you’re absolutely at the beginning of your career and effectively now a new blank sheet of paper and everybody’s in the same boat really to start with. It’s the extra add-ons which are really important I think if everybody’s got the same qualifications.”
PR degrees are nonetheless not highly regarded
“I would go for an English graduate over a media relations graduate, I think.” “I’m not a particularly big fan of the PR university degrees that people do; I think that I’d probably rather someone explored a passion, and then had done some interns or had some experience in PR.” “I’d say, get a traditional degree, or at least get a traditional element to your PR degree, so get psychology, get it with English as a major or a minor in it, so that you have something. I think it helps with credibility”
There is a apprenticeship route but this is a mixed reputation
“I'm just slightly worried that the apprentice focus might only emphasise the craft element of the job and it becomes a little bit like nursing rather than being a medical practitioner (...) the apprenticeship is probably a way better route for learning the craft skills of public relations. You're in the workplace, you're just adding a little bit of kind of conceptual stuff to your day-to-day practical skills. A university is probably a better future proofing, it's better for future proofing than for training for a specific job.”
No credential closure High value
High credential closure Low value of HE skills Ideal
Press officers Lab scientists Software engineers Financial analysts Academics Estate agents