Kirsten Roche, Careers Consultant for Graduate Support, explores the Graduate Outcomes survey.
Every year our graduates are surveyed to find out what they are doing 15 months after they left university. This is part of the UK’s largest annual social survey, the Graduate Outcomes Survey. This is a new survey and the first set of results were released last year. In this blog post we look at what happened to University of Edinburgh graduates from the class of 2018 and consider what that might mean for our future graduates.
Headline figures
The headlines for the class of 2018 are really positive. 85% of Edinburgh graduates were in a highly skilled or graduate level role or further study 15 months after graduation; this is the highest of any institution in Scotland and 11th out of the research intensive Russell Group of UK institutions. What’s more, 96.5% of graduates were in employment of any level or further study 15 months after graduating.
What were they doing?
The majority (almost 70%) of graduates were in employment; this falls slightly when looking at graduates form undergraduate degrees where a higher proportion went onto further study.
The top industry areas were:
- Education
- Health
- Public administration (government at all levels)
- Financial services
- IT and consulting
Graduate voices
The survey also asks graduates what they think about their current activity. Over 80% of Edinburgh graduates thought what they were doing was meaningful and was on track with their future career plans and almost three quarters felt that they were using the skills they had gained from their course at Edinburgh.
What does all this mean for you?
Hopefully the results from the latest survey will provide some reassurance that graduates from Edinburgh are in demand by employers and further study providers and that they overwhelmingly feel what they are doing is meaningful. The results in this post were pre-pandemic so have to be viewed within that context, but there was clearly a strong foundation for Edinburgh graduates as we headed into the pandemic.
Sometimes looking at what previous graduates have done can provide inspiration or reassurance for your own career path. You can take a look at the full breakdown of the class of 2018 results for your School. It may be that this causes more confusion for you and if that is the case that’s OK; the Careers Service is here to help.
We have lots of resources to help you discover what’s out there and if you are approaching graduation and feeling confused then you can make an appointment to speak to one of our team.
(Image credit: Maklay62 on Pixabay)
