The Destinations of Post Graduate Leavers From Higher Education 2016: Executive Summary

Trends in postgraduate employment The data shows that the graduate labour market as a whole in the UK had probably recovered from the recession by 2015, but that is not necessarily the case for postgraduates. Unemployment is not a perfect metric, but it is a revealing one. The postgraduate jobs market for both master’s and doctoral graduates may not have recovered from the recession and we have to ask the question whether or not it will. Crucial parts of this jobs market have seen significant changes in the last 15 years. The UK pharmaceutical industry, for example, has seen large job losses in R&D, which has affected the market for doctoral graduates. Austerity has hit public sector funding of jobs in health, social care and in higher education, all of which provided an important labour market for master’s qualifiers. We need to be mindful of where the jobs are – and where they are not – and ensure that we are able to support postgraduates with good quality, timely and evidenced data. However, overall, the UK postgraduate jobs market is in reasonable shape. As we enter the challenges of Brexit, we can be sure that the large majority of postgraduates will quickly enter good quality careers and that some of the UK’s most pressing skills challenges can be addressed by the careful training and deployment of good quality postgraduate qualifiers.

AGCAS Phoenix - Issue 151