PIs 2003/04: Employment of graduates

This table is based on a different population from the other performance indicator tables and has benchmarks that take into account a wider range of factors than those for the other indicators. The 2003/04 employment indicator is based on the new Destinations of Leavers in Higher Education (DLHE) survey which replaced the First Destinations Supplement (FDS) in 2002/03. The DLHE survey collects richer information than the FDS. For example, leavers are able to provide more detailed information regarding work and further study, even where these are concurrent. This results in a matrix of possible combinations of work and study allowing more comprehensive analysis.

The employment indicator expresses the number of graduates who say they are working or studying (or both) as a percentage of all those who are working or studying or seeking work. All other categories are excluded from this indicator. Please refer to the matrix in the definitions document for further details.

For the indicator, we provide the actual value, a benchmark value and context statistics. The context statistics provided in the first part of the table give the population numbers on which the percentages are based. In addition, as DLHE is a survey, the response rate for each institution is included. Indicators for institutions with relatively small populations or relatively low response rates should be treated with caution. Other context statistics, in the last columns of the table, show the proportion of respondents not available for work; the proportion of respondents who returned a questionnaire but refused to take part in the survey; the proportion of graduates from medical, dental and veterinary courses and the proportion who graduated from sandwich courses.