You are what you see ...

Research undertaken by Reed.co.uk amongst 18-34yr olds found that 1 in 4 admitted that TV has influenced their career choices. The Apprentice was the top TV programme to influence careers, followed by Dragons’ Den, and then CSI and Law & Order. Love Island was seen as helping to inspire careers in fitness and sales thanks to an onscreen gym ...

Analysis of the benefits of a Degree

Analysis of data from 2015-16 has revealed some startling facts about the cost-benefits of going to university:

• 18-25% of undergraduates were studying for degrees which fail to deliver a lifetime-earnings premium that justifies the average student debt, from tuition fees and maintenance loans, of £50,000.
• 40% of undergraduates were enrolled in courses that led to median earnings below the student-loan repayment threshold of £25,000, after five years.
• 10% were enrolled in courses with median earnings below £25,000 ten years after graduation - representing 134,000 students every year who won't be paying back anything ten years after graduating yet who will have accumulated significant interest.
• 20% would be no better off five years after graduating than if they had chosen to take a non-university route, such as an Apprenticeship.

It could be argued that higher education and the "university experience" are a reward in themselves, beyond income, but ...

FBI tactics to address essay cheating

Now software is being developed using ‘forensic linguistics’, which analyses the composition of a document including vocabulary, punctuation and format. It is a technique used by the FBI to create profiles of criminal suspects. At the moment it is not illegal to set up a company writing essays, dissertations or other assignments for students. The companies simply post a disclaimer telling students their products are intended for reference or a guide. Their marketing tactics, emailing and messaging students directly, indicate just how lucrative the business is. As well as widespread use of sponsorship of young "vloggers" and other social influencers, some are also going on to city centre campuses with leaflets that imply they are from student support services. [source:GTAssociates]

Graduate earnings

With more and more concerns being reported in the media that some graduate career pathways may not result in incomes which repay the costs of the degree course, the i newspaper has recently published a table of earnings by degrees:

Further evidence of the increase in unconditional offers

A report from UCAS shows that 34% of 18yr olds applying for university places in England, Wales and Northern Ireland this year received some form of unconditional offer, with such offers rising from 3,000 in 2013 to 68,000 and reached 87,500 when combined with offers that became unconditional when a student made the institution their firm choice. The analysis also showed that the majority of sixth form applicants missed their predicted A-level grades, regardless of the type of offer held. Applicants with offers conditional on achieving specific grades missed their targets by two grades or more in 56% of cases, compared with 67% for students with unconditional offers.

What is paid for by Tuition Fees?

Research by the Higher Education Policy Institute found that under half of the tuition fee paid is spent on the cost of teaching, the rest goes on buildings, IT and libraries, administration, or welfare. They said that students should be given much more information about how their fee is being used. 

A breakdown from Nottingham Trent per student showed:

• 39% spent on academic staff, course equipment and staff-related costs 

• 36% spent on buildings, libraries, IT, sports, careers, admissions, staff, administration and widening access to poorer applicants 

• 17% invested in "enhancing teaching, research infrastructure and the student experience" 

• 8% spent on professional services, including marketing, finance and the vice-chancellor's pay 

The research also showed that universities can have very different levels of dependency on the current £9,250 annual tuition fees. Tuition fees were only 15% of income for Cambridge, but at Falmouth it was 83% and Nottingham Trent was 81%. The Office for Students said: "We can identify and will act when they are not transparent about value for money or are not delivering strong enough outcomes for students or taxpayers."  [source: CES newsletter]

Women benefit most from going to university

A study from the DfE and the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that female graduates earn 28% more than non-graduate women, whilst male graduates earn 8% more than non-graduate men. The report, based on tax records of people who went to school in England and then to university in the UK, shows a woman with a degree earns £6,700 more per year, on average than a non-graduate woman. But a male graduate earns £2,700, on average, more than a man without a degree. 

The figures reflect the fact that women who do not go to university are more likely have children earlier than graduates and on average are more likely to be working part-time in their twenties. Women in their twenties without degrees are twice as likely to be working part-time compared with their graduate peers. Thus, the big gains for women graduates is partially down to comparisons between full-time graduate earnings and those non-graduates working part-time. For men, the financial gains of a degree are much less certain, and 33% of male graduates went to a university in which there was a "negligible or negative impact" on earnings compared with those without a degree. The figures have been adjusted to take into account the background of students and previous academic achievement, making it a like-for-like comparison.  [source: CES newsletter]