Category: graduates

  • Graduate careers and employability are now fundamental to institutional success

    Graduate careers and employability are now fundamental to institutional success

    Higher education institutions are navigating one of the most complex operating environments in their history.

    Financial pressure, demographic change, regulatory scrutiny, political scepticism, and shifting student expectations are no longer episodic challenges, they are structural conditions. One function increasingly sits at the centre of institutional success and risk: careers and employability.

    Graduate outcomes are no longer a background metric; they shape league tables, influence recruitment, inform regulatory judgements, and increasingly underpin public and political confidence in higher education. But their significance goes far beyond compliance. Careers and employability are now where strategy, regulation, and student experience collide.

    From bolt-on to backbone

    For many years, professional careers work in higher education was framed – often unconsciously – as a support service operating at the margins of the academic project. Careers services were unfairly characterised as cardigans and chamomile in a cupboard in a quiet corner of campus. Valuable, certainly, but supplementary. That framing could not be further from the truth today.

    Over the last 15 years we have seen a wide range of regulatory changes in HE (particularly in England) including the Teaching Excellence Framework, the tightening of access and participation regulation, the Graduate Outcomes survey, or the debate around fees. In practice, this has shifted careers and employability from the periphery to the core of institutional performance.

    Careers teams are now the heartbeat of access and participation commitments, facilitating and supporting curriculum design and assessment, driving progression outcomes, and at the intersection of institutional risk and reputation.They are shaping the conditions under which universities can evidence quality, value, and legitimacy.

    More than a metric

    It is understandable that the sector has been wary of graduate outcomes being reduced to a blunt proxy for value. But rejecting the importance of outcomes altogether is neither realistic nor desirable. Graduate outcomes matter because graduates matter, and graduate destinations are not just a metric; they are a test of purpose. Every regulatory data point represents a graduate life shaped by institutional choices about curriculum, opportunity, support, and inclusion.

    Careers and employability professionals work in that space every day, translating learning into identity, helping students navigate uncertainty, and addressing structural inequalities that regulation increasingly demands institutions confront.This is skilled, strategic work. It requires data literacy, policy fluency, pedagogical understanding, and deep employer insight.

    One of the clearest lessons of the regulatory environment is that employability cannot be “fixed” by a single team. No careers service, however strong, can alone address continuation risks, differential outcomes, or progression gaps rooted in curriculum design, assessment practice, or institutional culture. Contemporary careers and employability requires academics embedding employability meaningfully into learning, scalable work-based learning opportunities, aligned systems and student support, senior leadership expectation setting and accountability and employers as partners.

    As Lisa-Dionne Morris put it at our Annual Conference last year: “it takes a village to raise a child, and a whole university to make a student employable.” Careers services remain the engine room of this work, but they are most effective when employability is treated as a strategic, institution-wide endeavour, not a delegated function.

    Public confidence, political scrutiny, and the graduate narrative

    Beyond regulation, careers and employability now sit at the heart of a wider reputational challenge for higher education. Public confidence in universities has been strained by debates about value for money, fairness, and relevance. Graduate outcomes, rightly or wrongly, have become a proxy for these concerns.

    This is why the creation and fulfilling of opportunity features so prominently in the current Universities UK work on HE reputation in society. Careers and employability offer one of the most tangible, human responses to scepticism: evidence that higher education enables social mobility, economic participation, and meaningful contribution.

    This is not about reducing education to salary metrics. It is about demonstrating that universities help people build sustainable lives and purposeful futures. These are outcomes that matter to individuals, communities, and policymakers alike. This is why the vast majority of our members got into this line of work, and what motivates them to succeed.

    A moment of change

    Over the past year, the professional community supporting this work has been reflecting deeply on its future. Through a large-scale listening exercise, careers and employability professionals made their views clear: the work has evolved, expectations have risen, and the structures supporting it need to evolve too. That reflection has led to a significant moment of renewal.

    AGCAS (The Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services) is becoming the Graduate Futures Institute. This change reflects a broader shift in how careers and employability are understood and positioned. The new name signals our holistic focus on graduate futures – not just immediate graduate destinations, an inclusive view of who contributes to graduate success and a commitment to impact, leadership and quality.

    It recognises that careers and employability are not ancillary to university success – they are fundamental to it.

    Careers leadership is institutional leadership

    One of the most striking changes in recent years has been the role of careers leaders themselves. They now operate at the intersection of regulation, pedagogy, strategy, and performance. They advise on risk, shape institutional narratives, and increasingly sit at tables where decisions about quality, investment, and accountability are made. This is why leadership development and collective voice matter so much in this space.

    The Graduate Futures Institute exists to support that leadership; equipping practitioners to engage confidently with policy, influence institutional strategy, and articulate the value of their work in a regulatory environment that demands clarity and evidence.

    Universities are unlikely to see regulatory pressure ease in the near future. If anything, expectations around outcomes, value, and accountability will intensify. In that context, careers and employability are a strategic asset to be invested in, not a reputational risk to be managed.

    Graduate Futures Institute members will make that strategic intent a reality. They connect students to opportunity, institutions to purpose, and regulation to lived experience. If universities are serious about success, then they must be serious about careers and employability.

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  • Four Tips to Help Students and Families Navigate Life After High School – The 74

    Four Tips to Help Students and Families Navigate Life After High School – The 74

    Many high school seniors are now focusing on what they will do once they graduate – or how they don’t at all know what is to come.

    Families trying to guide and support these students at the juncture of a major life transition likely also feel nervous about the open-ended possibilities, from starting at a standard four-year college to not attending college at all.

    I am a mental health counselor and psychology professor.

    Here are four tips to help make deciding what comes after high school a little easier for everyone involved:

    1. Shadow someone with a job you might want

    I have worked with many college students who are interested in a particular career path, but are not familiar with the job’s day-to-day workings.

    A parent, teacher or another adult in this student’s life could connect them with someone they shadow at work, even for a day, so the student can better understand what the job entails.

    High school students may also find that interviewing someone who works in a particular field is another helpful way to narrow down career path options, or finalize their college decisions.

    Research published in 2025 shows that high school students who complete an internship are better able to decide whether certain careers are a good fit for them.

    2. Look at the numbers

    Full-time students can pay anywhere from about US$4,000 for in-state tuition at a public state school per semester to just shy of $50,000 per semester at a private college or university. The average annual cost of tuition alone at a public college or university in 2025 is $10,340, while the average cost of a private school is $39,307.

    Tuition continues to rise, though the rate of growth has slowed in the past few years.

    About 56% of 2024 college graduates had taken out loans to pay for college.

    Concerns about affording college often come up with clients who are deciding on whether or not to get a degree. Research has shown that financial stress and debt load are leading to an increase in students dropping out of college.

    It can be helpful for some students to look at tuition costs and project what their monthly student loan payments would be like after graduation, given the expected salary range in particular careers. Financial planning could also help students consider the benefits and drawbacks of public, private, community colleges or vocational schools.

    Even with planning, there is no guarantee that students will be able to get a job in their desired field, or quickly earn what they hope to make. No matter how prepared students might be, they should recognize that there are still factors outside their control.

    3. Normalize other kinds of schools

    I have found that some students feel they should go to a four-year college right after they graduate because it is what their families expect. Some students and parents see a four-year college as more prestigious than a two-year program, and believe it is more valuable in terms of long-term career growth.

    That isn’t the right fit for everyone, though.

    Enrollment at trade-focused schools increased almost 20% from the spring of 2020 through 2025, and now comprises 19.4% of public two-year college enrollment.

    Going to a trade school or seeking a two-year associate’s degree can put students on a direct path to get a job in a technical area, such as becoming a registered nurse or electrician.

    But there are also reasons for students to think carefully about trade schools.

    In some cases, trade schools are for-profit institutions and have been subjected to federal investigation for wrongdoing. Some of these schools have been fined and forced to close.

    Still, it is important for students to consider which path is personally best for them.

    Research has shown that job satisfaction has a positive impact on mental health, and having a longer history with a career field leads to higher levels of job satisfaction.

    4. Consider a gap year before shutting down the idea

    One strategy that high school graduates have used in recent years is taking a year off between high school and college in order to better determine what is the right fit for a student. Approximately 2% to 3% of high school graduates take a gap year – typically before going on to enroll in college.

    Some young people may travel during a gap year, volunteer, or get a job in their hometown.

    Whatever the reason students take gap years, I have seen that the time off can be beneficial in certain situations. Taking a year off before starting college has also been shown to lead to better academic performance in college.

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Graduate jobs and recruitment reality

    Graduate jobs and recruitment reality

    Despite frequent headlines warning of large declines in graduate jobs, the Institute of Student Employers (ISE) Student Recruitment Survey 2025 shows a less severe and more nuanced reality of the entry-level recruitment market.

    Our survey captures recruitment trends from 155 ISE employer members who received over 1.8m job applications for over 31,000 early careers roles. For these employers, graduate hiring has fallen by eight per cent this year, marking the weakest year for graduate hiring since the 12 per cent decline during the pandemic in 2020.

    Although the ISE represents larger employers who recruit graduates onto formal training programmes, broader labour market data also shows reduced hiring which may impact students who take jobs that may not be part of a formal training programme. For example, data from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation shows a 13 per cent drop in all job adverts from July 2024 to July 2025.

    However, this trend varies from sector to sector and employer to employer. ISE’s survey found that while 42 per cent of employers reduced graduate hiring levels, 25 per cent of employers maintained hiring levels – and 33 per cent reported an increase.

    Looking ahead to 2025–26, we expect graduate recruitment to remain challenging as employers forecast an overall seven per cent reduction in graduate hiring, driven by sharp declines for a small number of large employers.

    Rebalancing early talent programmes

    Graduate programmes aren’t the only route into the UK’s top employers and investment in apprenticeships has been growing since the levy was introduced. ISE found employers are rebalancing early careers programmes with more focus on apprenticeships to meet skills demands.

    While graduate hiring declined this year, school and college leaver hiring increased by eight per cent. Graduates still outnumber apprentices and therefore the overall entry-level job market is down five per cent.

    This increase reflects the role of large levy-paying employers with greater resources to develop and manage apprenticeship schemes, bucking the wider market trend. Government data reports only a 0.6 per cent rise in apprenticeship starts among 19- to 24-year-olds over the past year.

    The ratio of graduates to school or college leaver hiring (which is mostly apprenticeships) among ISE members who recruit students onto both pathways is 1.8 graduates for every school/college leaver hire, down from 2.3 last year. This trend looks set to continue into 2025–26 with the ratio is forecast to decline further to 1.6:1.

    Despite this rebalancing, graduate hires still outnumber school and college leaver hires, and although the jobs market remains challenging, graduates remain a core element of early talent strategies.

    AI impact

    AI is undoubtedly reshaping the early careers recruitment sector. However, no one is telling us that AI is replacing entry level jobs (yet).

    As students increasingly use AI to craft job applications, they also submit a greater number of applications, driving up competition for each role. The application to vacancy ratio remains at a historic high of 140 applications per vacancy.

    The authenticity of applications from “AI-enabled candidates” has also emerged as a key employer concern. In fact, an arms race appears to be underway: only 15 per cent of employers said they never suspected or identified candidates cheating in assessments, and 79 per cent of employers are redesigning or reviewing their recruitment processes in response to AI developments.

    Currently around half of employers allow candidates to use AI tools during the recruitment process, primarily for drafting covering letters and CVs and completing online application questions. Only a small proportion of employers (10 per cent) have banned the use of AI or introduced technical measures to prevent its use.

    Our data also shows that 45 per cent of employers had not provided applicants with any guidance on when it was or was not appropriate to use AI. This guidance may support students in navigating their transition into a graduate role and help employers manage their application volumes.

    But while students are embracing AI in their job search, the use of AI by recruiters is currently limited, but likely to grow. While over half of employers use automated systems to fully manage some aspects of testing, AI use is very rare. Employers are most likely to use AI in gamified assessments, but even here the adoption rate is only 15 per cent. Looking ahead to the next five years, more than half of employers expect to use AI in their recruitment processes, and 70 per cent anticipate increasing their use of automation.

    Getting ahead

    The graduate job market is challenging, reflecting the broader economic climate – but it is not without opportunity.

    Students looking to get ahead should remain cautious about their prospects in their chosen career, but the graduate job market is always competitive. A job search should be treated just like a job. Applications should be authentic, considered and tailored, with a focus on quality not quantity. And work experience remains key, with employers reporting former interns better equipped with the skills that they need.

    For universities, these findings highlight the importance of preparing students for a more complex and competitive graduate market through close collaboration with employers.

    As employers rebalance early talent programmes and adapt to the rise of AI, institutions have a key role to play in equipping students with practical experience, adaptability, and digital literacy.

    Strengthening partnerships with employers, embedding employability across the curriculum, and helping students navigate responsible AI use will be critical to ensuring graduates continue to thrive in a shifting recruitment market.

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  • Careers services can help students avoid making decisions based on AI fears

    Careers services can help students avoid making decisions based on AI fears

    How students use AI tools to improve their chances of landing a job has been central to the debate around AI and career advice and guidance. But there has been little discussion about AI’s impact on students’ decision making about which jobs and sectors they might enter.

    Jisc has recently published two studies that shine light on this area. Prospects at Jisc’s Early Careers Survey is an annual report that charts the career aspirations and experiences of more than 4,000 students and graduates over the previous 12 months. For the first time, the survey’s dominant theme was the normalisation of the use of AI tools and the influence that discourse around AI is having on career decision making. And the impact of AI on employability was also a major concern of Jisc’s Student Perceptions of AI Report 2025, based on in-depth discussions with over 170 students across FE and HE.

    Nerves jangling

    The rapid advancements in AI raise concerns about its long-term impact, the jobs it might affect, and the skills needed to compete in a jobs market shaped by AI. These uncertainties can leave students and graduates feeling anxious and unsure about their future career prospects.

    Important career decisions are already being made based on perceptions of how AI may change work. The Early Careers Survey found that one in ten students had already changed their career path because of AI.

    Plans were mainly altered because students feared that their chosen career was at risk of automation, anticipating fewer roles in certain areas and some jobs becoming phased out entirely. Areas such as coding, graphic design, legal, data science, film and art were frequently mentioned, with creative jobs seen as more likely to become obsolete.

    However, it is important not to carried away on a wave of pessimism. Respondents were also pivoting to future-proof their careers. Many students see huge potential in AI, opting for careers that make use of the new technology or those that AI has helped create.

    But whether students see AI as an opportunity or a threat, the role of university careers and employability teams is the same in both cases. How do we support students in making informed decisions that are right for them?

    From static to electricity

    In today’s AI-driven landscape, careers services must evolve to meet a new kind of uncertainty. Unlike previous transitions, students now face automation anxiety, career paralysis, and fears of job displacement. This demands a shift away from static, one-size-fits-all advice toward more personalised, future-focused guidance.

    What’s different is the speed and complexity of change. Students are not only reacting to perceived risks but also actively exploring AI-enhanced roles. Careers practitioners should respond by embedding AI literacy, encouraging critical evaluation of AI-generated advice, and collaborating with employers to help students understand the evolving world of work.

    Equity must remain central. Not all students have equal access to digital tools or confidence in using them. Guidance must be inclusive, accessible, and responsive to diverse needs and aspirations.

    Calls to action should involve supporting students in developing adaptability, digital fluency, and human-centred skills like creativity and communication. Promote exploration over avoidance, and values-based decision-making over fear, helping students align career choices with what matters most to them.

    Ultimately, careers professionals are not here to predict the future, but to empower all students and early career professionals to shape it with confidence, curiosity, and resilience.

    On the balance beam

    This isn’t the first time that university employability teams have had to support students through change, anxiety, uncertainty or even decision paralysis when it comes to career planning, but the driver is certainly new. Through this uncertainty and transition, students and graduates need guidance from everyone who supports them, in education and the workplace.

    Collaborating with industry leaders and employers is key to ensuring students understand the AI-enhanced labour market, the way work is changing and that relevant skills are developed. Embedding AI literacy in the curriculum helps students develop familiarity and understand the opportunities as well as limitations. Jisc has launched an AI Literacy Curriculum for Teaching and Learning Staff to support this process.

    And promoting a balanced approach to career research and planning is important. The Early Careers Survey found almost a fifth of respondents are using generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot as a source of careers advice, and the majority (84 per cent) found them helpful.

    While careers and employability staff welcome the greater reach and impact AI enables, particularly in challenging times for the HE sector, colleagues at an AGCAS event were clear to emphasise the continued necessity for human connection, describing AI as “augmenting our service, not replacing it.”

    We need to ensure that students understand how to use AI tools effectively, spot when the information provided is outdated or incorrect, and combine them with other resources to ensure they get a balanced and fully rounded picture.

    Face-to-face interaction – with educators, employers and careers professionals – provides context and personalised feedback and discussion. A focus on developing essential human skills such as creativity, critical thinking and communication remains central to learning. After all, AI doesn’t just stand for artificial intelligence. It also means authentic interaction, the foundation upon which the employability experience is built.

    Guiding students through AI-driven change requires balanced, informed career planning. Careers services should embed AI literacy, collaborate with employers, and increase face-to-face support that builds human skills like creativity and communication. Less emphasis should be placed on one-size-fits-all advice and static labour market forecasting. Instead, the focus should be on active, student-centred approaches. Authentic interaction remains key to helping students navigate uncertainty with confidence and clarity.

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  • Employers will increasingly focus on graduates’ skills over technical knowledge

    Employers will increasingly focus on graduates’ skills over technical knowledge

    There are few safe bets about the future, so the impact of technology on labour markets, how transitions through education and into work will change, and the need to reskills and upskill, can only be predicted.

    But we do know that technology – AI in particular – is a disruptive force. We know that declining birth rates and higher employer skills needs have the potential to create a difficult labour market that hinders growth. We also know it’s likely that people who don’t adapt to changes in work could see their careers suffer.

    In response to these shifts, graduate and apprentice employers are considering fresh approaches to their talent strategies. Strategies that will focus less on a person’s age, education and technical experience, and more on their skills, capabilities and aptitudes.

    The Institute of Student Employers (ISE) recent report, From early career to emerging talent, shows that 68 per cent of early career employers have already adopted or partially adopted a skills-based strategy to hiring – and another 29 per cent are considering it.

    A constricted labour market

    Quite rightly, we are all concerned about the tough jobs market facing students, the high volumes of applications they make, and the time it takes many to get a graduate job. Because of the UK’s anaemic growth, the current labour market is tight (ISE predicts graduate vacancies will only grow by one per cent this year). But once growth returns to the economy, it’s likely employers will see significant talent shortages.

    We can see latent labour market problems in the current Labour Market Information (LMI) data. The UK’s unemployment rate at 4.4 per cent is historically low. Only 16.4m people in England and Wales are educated to level 4 or over – yet there are 18.6m jobs currently at that level, rising to 22.7m over the next 10 years. Over the next decade the working age population will increase only by 1.14m people (the over-70s, on the other hand, will increase by 2.1m).

    Mention 2022 and while most remember the heatwave, recruiters remember the post-pandemic growth spurt which left many vacancies unfilled. A CIPD labour market survey from summer of that year reported that 47 per cent of employers had hard-to-fill vacancies and the top response to difficulties reported by employers was to upskill existing staff.

    A problematic word

    What is a skill, an attribute or a capability? What can be taught, learned and developed, and what individual traits are innate? Some skills are technical, some more behavioural. And we’ll all have our own views on the abilities of ourselves and others. So, the word skills is problematic, which makes agreement on what approach we take to skills problematic.

    In their recent Wonkhe articles, Chris Millward and Konstantinos Kollydas and James Coe are right to highlight the challenge of differentiating between knowledge, technical behavioural and cognitive skills. To varying degrees, employers need both. I’d add another challenge, particularly in the UK: the link between what you study and what you do is less pronounced. Over 80 per cent of graduate recruiters do not stipulate a degree discipline. This makes connecting skills development to the labour market problematic.

    Another problem with the use of the word skills is the danger that we take a reductive, overly simplistic view of skills. A student who does a group activity successfully may think they’ve nailed teamworking skills. In reality, working with people involves a multitude of skills that many of us spend our working lives trying to master.

    Employers are already increasing their focus on skills

    In their report The skill-based organisation: a new operating model for work and the workforce, Deloitte describe how organisations are developing “a whole new operating model for work and the workforce that places skills, more than jobs, at the centre.”

    As recruitment for specific expertise becomes more challenging, people are matched to roles based on skills and potential, less on experience in a role. Skills-based hiring strategies encompass career changers, older workers, people who have near-to work experience. Technology maps an organisation’s skills base to create an internal marketplace for roles and employees are encouraged to re-skill and upskill in order to move about the organisation as jobs change.

    Graduates will need the skills and associated mindset to navigate this future world of work. World Economic Forum 2025 Future of Jobs analysis shows that 69 per cent of UK organisations placed resilience, flexibility and agility in the top five skills that will increase in importance by 2030.

    Graduate recruitment strategies could evolve to make less use of education exit points to define the talent pool hired from: career-changers, older-workers, and internal switchers are incorporated into development programmes. More learning content becomes focused on developing behavioural and cognitive skills to promote a more agile cohort.

    Students do develop skills

    Within HE, practitioners have already established a considerable body of knowledge, research and practice on employability skills. Where change is occurring, is in the campus-wide approach to skills that many institutions have developed (or are in the process of developing). Approaches that aim to ensure all students have the opportunity to develop a core set of skills that will enable them to transition through education and into work. Bristol and Kingston, among others, have shown how skills can be embedded right across the curriculum.

    I’m a big fan of Bobby Duffy’s work on delayed adulthood which suggests to me that the average student or graduate in their late teens and early twenties is at quite a different stage of development to previous generations. Which means that it’s wrong-headed to think of deficits in students’ work readiness as the fault of students (or their coddling parents).

    Employers and educators together have a role to play in helping students understand their own skills and how to develop them. Skills require scaffolding. Surfacing skills in the curriculum ensures students understand how their academic work develops core skills.

    And the provision and promotion of extra-curricular activities, including work experience, can be built into the student journey. Programmes where students develop their ability to deal with change and challenging situations, to analyse and solve complex problems, to adopt a positive approach to life-long learning.

    The skills agenda opportunity

    At the ISE we leave the language of skills gaps and employers’ apparent low opinion of graduates to the tabloids. Only 17 per cent of employers in our annual survey say they disagree that graduates are not work-ready. We do ask a more subtle question on the attitudes and behaviours that employers expect early career hires to possess when they start work. The top skills employers thought students weren’t as proficient in as they expected were self-awareness, resilience and personal career management.

    I am not, never have been, and never will be, a policy wonk. Maybe someone who is can design the architecture of incentives and systems that better connect education pathways to labour market needs. This architecture will also have to be able to predict labour market needs four to five years in advance, because that’s the lag between a typical students’ course choice and their job application. But if that can’t be done, surely a good investment is ensuring that students have plenty of opportunities to develop their skills and attributes to deal with an ever more changing workplace.

    Fully embracing a skills approach is a great opportunity to demonstrate how HE adds value to the UK economy through the triangulation of student interests, employer needs and a great education experience.

    Read the ISE’s report, From early talent to emerging talent, for a detailed analysis of the forces impacting how employers will hire and develop students in the future.

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