The data

The Graduate Outcomes survey will enable us to offer rich data which fully reflects recent developments in the HE sector and in the graduate labour market.

Our first major release of data from the new Graduate Outcomes survey will be in Spring 2020. In the meantime, we continue to publish vital destinations data from the current survey, and have previously blogged about our upcoming destinations releases.

The graduate voice

The new Graduate Outcomes survey recognises the need to have a nuanced understanding of what counts as graduate success.

We will still be able to publish the key information on salaries and on the percentage of graduates in professional occupations. But we will also be capturing the graduate voice for the first time.

We have three new ‘graduate voice’ measures which allow graduates to comment on:

• How meaningful or important they feel their activity to be
• Whether they are using the skills they gained from their qualification in their current activity
• How they are progressing towards their future goals.

A 15-month survey point

Graduates will be surveyed approximately 15 months after completing their studies. This is a significant change from the current DLHE survey, which contacts graduates after six months. 15 months has been chosen as it gives graduates a meaningful opportunity to progress in their post-graduation activities.

Capturing non-traditional career paths

New questions and routing in the Graduate Outcomes survey will allow us to gather deeper insights into graduates pursuing non-traditional career paths, such as those developing creative portfolios or setting up a business.

More information

You can view our new model for the collection of graduate outcomes data and the final questions that are being used within the survey.