Marketing higher education: What's the problem?
- Many HEIs' prospectuses & websites overstate graduates' employability
- Accounts Assistant
- Administrative Assistant
- Administrative Assistant
- Administrative Assistant
- Clerk
- Clerk
- Data Entry Clerk
- Data Input Clerk
- Data Inputter
- Cashier [restaurant]
- Industrial Engineer
- Management Trainee
- Graduate Surveyor, trainee
- Air Traffic Agent
- Competition prevents candid disclosure
- A vicious circle undermines graduates' employability and inhibits candid disclosure
- Changes in the market
- The neglected personal & professional development curriculum
- Marketing & public relations
- UK higher education is committed to outcome transparency
As an unexceptional example of this very widespread practice, compare:
A university website accessed in June 2003 |
The complete cohort of 1998/99 graduate employment destinations, six months after completing BSc Mathematics at the same university |
What Next? Careers for Mathematics & Statistics Graduates A degree in mathematics and/or statistics opens the door to virtually any area of employment and our graduates seldom have trouble finding employment in their chosen area... The data is for graduates in 1998/99... ...our graduates fare substantially better than the average graduate in
Mathematical Sciences |
|
In contrast with the website's reassurances, 64% of highly skilled graduates who entered employment from this mathematics degree found themselves in low-skilled, low-paid work.
Complete cohort employment destinations are seldom conspicuous on HEI websites. Many lecturers would like to disclose detailed destination information to prospective students, but not before similar courses at competitor universities do the same.
As students pay an increasing proportion of their HE costs, they become increasingly sensitive to the value for money offered by HE.
All HEIs are well equipped to teach and assess undergraduates. Few degree programmes teach and formally assess professional development and career management.
Media specialists have suggested that universities consider disappointed graduates when conducting communications risk assessments. A proactive approach to outcome transparency is likely to support public relations and marketing.
In September 2004 UCAS, Universities UK, SCOP, The Higher Education Academy and The Centre for Recording Achievement issued a joint statement describing their aim to support improvements in the promotion of HE courses, particularly in terms of accuracy, honesty and reliability and to encourage applicants to interpret and use information about HE courses in more sophisticated and effective ways. Amongst their immediate objectives they set out to improve potential HE applicants' understanding of employment opportunities likely to be available following graduation, and investigate the feasibility of downloading HESA destination data into UCAS Entry Profiles.