The traditional view of the laid back, fun loving, devil-may-care student lifestyle has disappeared and, as increasing numbers of students from all walks of life apply to university, a new picture has emerged of highly focussed individuals with a keen eye on their long-term employment prospects, a resolute aim to study a particular subject, and with a strong ambition to realise their full potential.

So claim the findings of an exciting and ground-breaking new study, Futuretrack, the largest research project of its kind, commissioned by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit (HECSU) and led by Professors Kate Purcell and Peter Elias from the Institute for Employment Research at the University of Warwick.

Futuretrack explores all aspects of students’ career and employment motivations and their reasons for applying to university and college. The study spans sources of information, key influences and influencers, attitudes to debt, sources of income, views on living away from home, and the reputation of their chosen institution; plus applicants thoughts on work experience.

The research revealed that seven in ten of last year’s university applicants claimed that going on to higher education was a part of their long-term career plan. Further, almost half of those questioned said they were going to university to ‘realise their potential’. The research also revealed some interesting perceptions on the cost of higher education: although three quarters of applicants agreed that student debts places an unreasonable burden on graduates, there appears to be a distinct lack of resentment amongst recent applicants over student loans with 73% agreeing that they are a good idea. Over a half of university applicants also agreed that students should contribute to the cost of their higher education if they can afford it.

It is clear that, as a more diverse population chooses to go to university, greater emphasis is being placed on long-term employment prospects when choosing institutions and courses; further, teachers and careers advisors in schools are playing a significant role in advising and encouraging those ‘first generation’ students whose parents do not necessarily have the experience to advise them.

The initial Futuretrack online survey, which sampled 15,000 university applicants in 2005, is now being extended to all who are applying for full-time undergraduate places this year (more than 450,000 candidates) and will assess the wide range of influences on students’ career choices by following their progression over a six-year period, whichever paths they follow. Students entering HE this autumn who have not signed up to take part have until 30th October to do so to be included in a £40,000 cash draw.

Professor Kate Purcell, University of Warwick, discussed Futuretracks groundbreaking study that explores all aspects of students’ career and employment motivations and their reasons for applying to university and college.

H: Tim Litchfield, Host
K: Kate Purcell, Hecsu
J: Jane Artez, Hecsu

H: Good afternoon, welcome along to today's chat, I'm Tim Litchfield. Now if you were to say the word “student” probably the stereotypical view would be that laid back kind of fun, outgoing, parties every night, beans every day kind of a look, but that seems to be disappearing day by day. This is all thanks to claims of research, which is being done by Future Track, which is the largest project, led by Hecsu, or the Higher Eduducation Careers Service Unit. Now this is all run by Kate Purcell and also by Peter Elias, who are actually with us today, we've got Kate with us today and also we have Jane Artez, who works for Hecsu itself, good afternoon ladies

J: Good afternoon

K: Good afternoon

H: Ok now if you want to get your questions into us today, it's very simple, all you need to do is click onto our website and then look at the box at the bottom, put in your name and your question and then we will try and answer as many questions as we can this afternoon. So first of all, Jane if you could tell us a little bit more about Future Track, that would be great

J: Well thank you for that, we thought we'd like to come along today to talk to you about Future Track because we're very excited about it, it's a really very important piece of longitudinal research that my organisation, Hecsu is funding. What it's going to do is to actually look at the career development of the students who are beginning university in 2006, and when we say the students, we really do mean all of them, all of them have in fact been invited to participate in an online questionnaire. We began this in May / June of this year and already we're reaching quite phenomenal levels of participation, and the idea is to actually find out more about how students proceed towards making decisions about their future employment

H: Ok well with this research there's also an incentive isn't there, there's a share of £40,000 that students can win as well

J: There is yes, in order to encourage the students to join in we're having a prize draw at the end of October, and indeed if there are any students out there listening today who haven't already joined in the survey then we'd be very delighted to have them before the 30th October

H: Ok so there's still time to take part in this, and they get on the website of Hecsu?

J: Yes if they go to www.Hecsu.ac.uk and follow the links for Future Track and there will be around £40,000 in quite large amounts –

H: So do you know a ball park figure of how many actual students you've had apply for this already?

J: So far we've got about 124,000 students

H: Ok that's good

J: Who've participated in the survey, and we really do think this is probably the biggest survey of its kind

H: Now with this new survey you're also going to be doing – am I right in believing that you're going to follow them for a 6 year progress, is this correct?

J: That's right yes

H: Ok and what kinds of things will you follow up on?

J: Well there are going to be 4 online questionnaires, the first one as I say was to try to find out more about how students are approaching university, why do they want to go, what kind of advice did they have before, why did they choose those subjects, what do they expect and so on. There'll be 3 more surveys taken as the students progress through university and the final collection of data will actually be approximately 1 year after they have left university, assuming a straight 3 year degree. So we should be able to find out how people make decisions and how they progress through their experiences at university and actually apply for jobs or further training at the end of their degrees

H: Ok. Kate you work for the University of Warwick, the Institute of Research, how did you get involved in the whole project?

K: Well I've been doing research for quite a long time on the graduate leaver market following up people who've done degrees to find out what kind of jobs they've got and what the relationship was between the kind of degrees that they did, the kinds of grades that they got at university, and the kinds of jobs that they did. But we've never had the opportunity before to start following graduates, following students at the point in which they're actually making the decision about which kind of university course or college course to study, and that's very exciting because usually in the past we've been doing research where we've gone to people maybe 3 years after they've graduated and first of all it's quite difficult to track people down 3 years after they've graduated, however much universities are cooperating, because people don't half move around at that stage of their lives, and we haven't been able before to actually get them at the point in which they're actually making the decisions and track those through and see how they change. If you ask somebody 3 years after they graduated why they decided to do biology or business studies, I guess there's likely to be a bit of post-factor rationalisation which might reflect what's happened to them, whereas if we actually ask them why they are doing the course now and then track how their attitudes change, how there ambitions change. As they learn more about what their options are that is going to be really interesting and useful.

H: Ok Kate we have had a lot of questions. We have had a question from Edward Moses. This is for you Kate. Which courses are well known to get the highest levels of employment after university?

K: Well surprisingly enough most graduates do go on to immediately after graduation to get jobs, but I guess what Edward really wants to know is who gets the good jobs? Who gets the really good jobs that use their careers and their training? The answer is, on a simple basis, generally, vocational degrees. Degrees which are geared toward particular occupations. Specialist degrees like medicine, education, planning degrees. Degrees which have got a built into them a professional training for a particular occupation. The students who tend to find most difficulty in finding jobs that really meet their aspirations, in terms of long term careers, tend to be the ones who have done more general degrees. So some people who do degrees in English Literature do them because they have a burning desire to be an English teacher and they probably go on and do a post-graduate degree and become an English teacher, but others are not quite sure what they want to do are trying to enter administration, management, journalism some of these jobs which are actually quite difficult and quite competitive to get into. It takes them a little bit longer. By and large the research we have done in the past has shown that after three, four years most graduates have actually found work which uses their skills and knowledge. The skills perhaps more than the direct knowledge.

H: Jane do you think your idea is that you are trying to get away from that young flowing free “don't know what I want to do kind of idea?” Do you think the older of us are more responsible about what we want to do in life?

J: There does seem to be some feeling around that perhaps more mature students are more likely to make more serious career students. I think we honestly at this stage don't really know the answer to that and I think one of the things that we are hoping this research will do is enable us to track whether or not there are differences in the way individuals behave. Whether there are differences between males and females, between people of different age groups and so on. I think at this stage we are looking forward to having answers to that type of question from the research.

H: But you are trying to get way from that whole kind of “young ones” TV programme student lifestyle of just messing around all the time?

J: I think that is very true because I think it is not always recognised that the age profile in universities has changed hugely in the last 15-20 years anyway. There are lots and lots more mature students attending university courses than there were in the past and certainly our early analysis of our Future Track findings suggests to us that people are approaching their studies with considerable concern for what comes next and they are viewing it as an investment. They are looking towards their future perhaps more than we might have acknowledged in the past.

H: Is it Freshers' week this week, has it just started?

J: It is yes.

H: As somebody who has never been to university, always wanted to but never has done, (we will get on to that in a second) can you tell me what does Freshers' week involve?

K: All sorts of things. Really it is about induction in to university life. Very often universities will tend to have events laid on for students so they can actually meet other students, get to know them, get to know their tutors, find their way around the city or the town that they are in. I am based in Manchester, as I think you know, and there was all sorts of goings-on at the campus, bands playing and floats playing and leaflets all over the place.

H: Is this a way to relax people a lot more, because obviously for some people this is their first time away from home, costs they worry about, new area. So it is a way to kind of relax students.

K: I think it is a way to help them settle in.

H: So can they take part in lots of extra-curricular activities, they can do different clubs e.t.c., correct?

K: I think it is showing that there is much more to university than just studying. Also much more university has to offer for example one of the preoccupations we have in this study is helping people make career decisions and most universities and colleges will be opening up their careers advisory services and encouraging new students to come and see what they have to offer, in terms of giving them information and advice about how to use their courses really well.

H: Why do you think that students seem to cram everything they have been studying and trying to learn, why do they cram it in to the end of the course, why do you think that is?

K: Well that is what happened in the past. Students do that. One of the things we found in our studies is that students are postponing actually beginning to look for jobs until after they have graduated. When I graduated, in the dark stone ages, people in their last year of university used to go along to the careers advisor and find out what kind of jobs there were, but in recent decades they have been more often concentrating on getting as good a degree as they can and then thinking afterwards now maybe I should go to the careers advisory services. This is one of the things that the careers advisors themselves are rather perturbed about. They have been keen to encourage students to use the facilities all the way through their courses not just at the very end and not just afterwards, because you can start thinking, even in your first year, about what kind of options are available to you. That is very helpful in terms of perhaps the options you choose when you go into your second year and the kind of extra activities that you do beyond university, getting work experience, doing voluntary work, whatever it is that is going to impress employers when you actually end up entering this competitive labour market.

H: Jane I have got a question for you, lots of questions coming in, Karen Harris wants to know “when will you know what the students are doing after they graduated and will this information be available to the general public?”

J: Well the future track information the students currently are not likely to graduate until 2009. So clearly in that cohort we won't know until sometime after that probably in 2010. Basically what will happen is that any research that we are funding at the moment we are totally committed to disseminating on our websites. So if people are wanting to find out what is happening to the students as they progress through university there will be lots more stages than their final job destination. If they want to keep an eye on our website which I mentioned earlier, the Hecsu website, we will be posting all our information there, we will be having conferences and reports and documents as well.

H: Is the survey meant to help parents of potential students choose the most appropriate courses. For example we will look for students that seem to be similar to our children or see what they have done and whether they succeeded. That kind of thing?

J: I think it will be very valuable for parents. I think the range of courses that are available for both parents and younger people or indeed older people to choose from nowadays is so extensive that the more information that we can put out there then the better. This piece of research will be very relevant because it is looking at the current cohorts and will be very contemporary in that sense.

H: Kate I have a question for you, thanks to Nina Pertwee. “Will we be able to look at the results and see what universities or courses lead to students having better or more satisfying careers?”

K: Yes. We won't be looking at universities and saying “Ha Ha that university isn't doing very well” we will be treating as confidential all the information that people give to us. So students, people who fill in the questionnaires for us and are interviewed by us at various stages need to understand that everything they say to us will be treated in great confidence and we will never cite them without asking for their permission first. What we will be doing is looking at particular cases and looking at trends and reporting back on what kinds of courses lead to different kinds of options and outcomes. What kind of results lead to different opportunities and outcomes. That is going to be very useful for careers advisors and also for students and aspiring students and parents to see what the options are and to see what the implications are for choosing to do a degree in maybe media studies rather than biology, or French and Italian rather than something else. They will be able to look at the results that we have and see what has happened relatively speaking in terms of how much they earn, how satisfied they are with their outcome, what kind of jobs they have and that is really very interesting and it just has not been available, with this degree of comprehensiveness, in the past.

H: A lot of work is going in to that. If you want to take part in this survey you have until the end of October to do it and you can win a share of £40,000. That will obviously help toward debts e.t.c. If you want to do this and you want to logon get on to the website www.hecsu.co.uk and you have got until the end of October. We will tell you that address again later and by the end we will put it on the website as well. Jane a question for you David Guard wants to know “I work in the UK for a Malaysian company that advises Malaysian students on British Universities. Is your survey going to include International student, and what information are you gathering about them and their experience at British Universities?”

J: Yes it will include international students. Basically our cohorts have been everybody who has applied to the UCAS this year and also we are encouraging applications, participation, in the survey from as wide a group as possible and that will include international students. Inevitably international students I think there were slightly more difficult to follow up at the other end because sometimes international students move on to another country to work. We are anticipating that they as a group will be difficult to keep in touch with but who knows we might be wrong there. Hecsu has also funded a small scale piece of research last year looking at the experiences of international students if anyone, and your caller, is particularly interested at looking at that there is a report again on our website about the careers services work with international students. This is very extensive work.

H: So it is very accessible?

J: Yes

H: I always wanted to go to university myself, but my biggest fear was the cost of university and since they bought in that thing about grants being paid by the individual, I always thought that would put people of, but according to your research 73% think it is quite a good idea.

K: Well I was surprised by that because we find that by and large these applicants seem to accept that it is not unreasonable that they should be taking out loans. 75% or 3 quarters of them thought that student loans were a good idea; they either strongly agreed or agreed. However they also felt, in about the same proportion (74%) said that they thought student debt has placed an unwarranted burden on students. So there is a lot of ambivalence about it. People do resent and worry about it and the thing that worries us as educators, putting on my academic hat rather than my researcher hat, is that very often it seems that the students most likely to be discouraged from going to university are the ones who come from less advantaged background. They seem to be more worried about the possibility of getting into debt. They seem to be more likely saying that they are going to work during term while they are students and of course we know that working during term does tend to have a negative effect on the results that you get. That is a bit worrying because it may be that they are carrying disadvantage through and I think that this is a policy implication that the government is going to have to take onboard. Many universities are indeed taking this onboard and are trying to make it easier on students who do need more help to participate in higher education.

H: Some say the answer is to eliminate the ones who are just going for a laugh, if that make sense to you?

K: Not many people just go for a laugh nowadays.

H: It is not a laugh when they get there.

K: They find out universities are making it harder for them. They get them to sign things in advance saying they are going to work hard. By and large the positive thing, the thing that really encouraged me, was that most people are saying that the main reason they are going to university is to increase there options after university, because they are interested in the subject they are going to study, that they see it leading to a good job. Most people are very conscious of the fact that higher education is an investment of time and it is important to use that investment well. Having said that they also expect to enjoy it and I think that is good. I think people are mostly doing the subjects that they do because they think it is going to be interesting and they can enjoy the course and I think that is very important because higher education is not just about employability it is also about learning.

H: Of course it is. It is a life-changing thing. Jane a question for you David Guard again “I would be also interested to know apart from overall academic knowledge are there any other purposes in carrying out this survey?”

J: Well our main purpose of carrying out the survey is to generate more information, more knowledge about the whole process of career decision making and career development. This is in order to support practice. The charity that I work for, the Hecsu, our mission is to work in support of students learning by working with career services. So it is our intention that this information is used by practitioners and indeed we are working with colleagues in the professional association ADCAS and many other services too, to actually put these findings into practical forms so the students are going to be able to benefit from them.

H: Following on from that Joanne Davis wants to know “Will the Future Track results be available on the TQI website?”

J: Not at the moment but that is a really good question, thank you Joanne. Basically the TQI website isn't quite the same thing. What happens here is the national students survey data is the majority of the information that goes into the TQI website. We at the moment don't have any plans for linking the two studies up, but it is a very good idea and one that perhaps we will explore in another forum.

H: For those of us not in the know TQI is?

J: The Teaching Quality Initiative. Basically it is a website where potential students can actually get information about the courses that are currently available. The information that is there consists very significantly of student evaluations and external examiners reports and other kinds of information about the courses.

H: Every day is an education isn't it. I just want to ask you again going back to what you were talking about working during term time. There doesn't seem to be that many kinds of jobs available to students. It is mostly bar work and that kind of thing, are you trying to push people away from that as well to maybe get more work experience for people so they can learn more about the career the foresee.

J: I think that is something that has been increase substantially. Many people who are running courses are building in work experience and especially beyond the usual sandwich courses students have been encouraged to find work which actually enables them to develop skills. Most universities now have job shops and they are not simply providing bar work and catering work and cleaning work. They are providing work within academia and with local employers which enables students to develop communication skills, to develop writing skills, presentation skills in a way that they will find useful that is complimentary to the courses that they are doing. I think that is one of the big revolutions that has happened in the last 10 years has been the fact that courses, people designing courses have not only looked at what they are putting in but what is going to go out and how that relates to the world of work outside. That is the case throughout the spectrum form Oxbridge through to newest university courses. There is a concern to look at practical skills and the transferable skills as well as the academic skills.

H: Kate a question for you here from Mohammed Duprise “What is usually the optimum age to start university? Are older students harder working or is going straight from sixth form more beneficial or getting interim employment at a younger age?”

K: Well it is very interesting as an educator I have always been very impressed by people who come into university having been doing something else in the world outside whether it is after a gap year or as a mature student. We know that mature students tend to be much more industrious, work harder and when we look at the Future Track pilot results we find that people who have chosen their course, mature students are much more likely to have a very clear idea of where that course is going to lead to. They are not doing history because they enjoyed history at school they are doing history because they think that they might want to be a history teacher or they want to go into journalism. They have very clear ideas of where courses are going to lead to and they are more likely to have chosen vocational courses. However the gap year questions really interest me because my gut feeling is people should be encouraged to have gap years, they should be encouraged to go out and do something else not follow straight on from school to university and as a teacher I find that students come back a bit more sensible mature focused. However we don't know if that is the case and now this study is going to enable us to actually look at what the impact of doing gap years has had. We will be able to look and see do they get better results, do they settle down more quickly, do they use the course more effectively, do they make better choices.? We don't know.

H: I think I have had a six gap year at the moment to be honest with you. Leon King wants to know “ I really want to spend some time travelling,” that is always a good idea, “should I do that before I start university or are there any courses which accommodate taking a year out, and are their any courses, or subjects that also encourage this kind of thing?”

K: Well I've answered that question really haven't I? I mean basically most courses will be quite happy for students to defer and take a year out and come back. There are some courses I think where that's not so enthusiastically looked upon like in mathematics and some courses where it's felt that people need to maintain continuity, but on the whole most university sort of course admissions tutors will be very happy for people to defer for a year. And the other thing I should say that employers are often very happy when they're interviewing students at the other end to talk to students about how they've used gap years. I mean obviously the most important thing is what you do with your gap year, if you just kind of lie around and pick up the dole, you're not going to impress anybody very much, but if you go and explore sort of darkest Africa and get lots of voluntary work experience and finance yourself to do that, that's pretty impressive really

H: And experience life, that's what you're saying?

K: Yes

H: Jane, question for you, Catherine Brooks wants to know from the careers advisors' point of view, “what use will be made with the information concerning how the students were influenced, and is there an aim to show the role of career advisors?”

J: Yes I think there is, the, I think we mentioned in response to an earlier question that it's our intention to use the information very much to inform practice, and also to inform policy. I think the interesting thing at the moment seems to be coming from careers services is that, the view is perhaps students are maybe leaving it until towards the end of their courses to actually go and visit their careers advisor, but often students perhaps don't realise how much contact they're having with their careers service as a normal part of their course, because most careers services are currently providing lots and lots of information to students right at the very beginning or their courses they're contributing to a curriculum in a variety of ways, they're running websites and job services and work experience services and so on and so forth, and that there's such a lot of material that's already out there that perhaps one of the things that we might do is to raise the awareness amongst students of what the careers service is actually providing for them now

H: That's perfect. Do you think the – because when I had a careers advisor back at like at school, it was a little bit different – I suppose it's a little bit different at university because they're a bit more focused and there's a lot more information out there, and at least a student is going on the right path do you think there's a lot more accessibility, do you think it's better to start advising at a younger age or maybe at the university stage?

J: Well I – my background includes careers guidance so my view is that you can't start too young in a sense, but I think the – what we used to try to always do is to encourage people to think of a whole range of options. I think starting out with trying to narrow people down into one or two single options when they're very young is not fair to them and not appropriate usually, so what we like to try to do is make sure that people have a whole range of information about all the choices and options that are available to them, because what happens, particularly I think to university students is that as they grow and mature and get to know about their own strengths and weaknesses, their ideas change and develop and what we really want them to try to do is to stay in touch with the kinds of people who are going to be able to help them on that journey in a sense and to help to show them what the implications of their decisions are

H: Perfect. Kate, quick question for you – Mike Farmer wants to know “do you have any comments on the large differences depending on social class background in the influence of parents and encouraging your respondents to apply to higher education, and the apparent small differences in the influence of teachers?”

K: Well this ties in very much with the last question actually which is the kind of information and advice that people have when they're making these early decisions about what to do when they grow up, what to do after school, and what we found from the Future Track study that we've done so far, the bit that we've done so far, but also from previous studies is that people enter higher education with very different access to information. People from backgrounds where neither of the parents has any experience of higher education, where they've gone to schools where not many people go on to higher education, start of somewhat handicapped in terms of not getting the kinds of career advice very often or just knowing what the options are that people who come from very much more traditional higher education backgrounds get advice from, is that's coming across very clearly. This targeted information required, and what we've also found in previous studies is the people who kind of drift into higher education, not quite sure what they're doing or doing something because somebody else has said sort of maybe you might do that, they're the people who end up drifting at the end, they're the people who end up coming out and not being very sure what they want, so I think what Jane was saying, the early careers guidance is very important and it's not the kind of careers guidance which forces people to say what you want to do when you're 16 because people change their minds, most 16,17,18 year olds don't want to be told what they should do, but they do need to know what the options are and what the implications of choices are, and that's what we're going to be able to do with this study

H: Perfect, right last question for you Kate then – Paul Weller, like your songs – “this is a vital piece of research but is any attempt going to be made to identify the main reasons for some 100,000 applicants who decide not to go onto higher education or university?”

K: Well that is what is one of the most wonderful things about this study, that we haven't been able to do before. Because we've looked at people who've applied through UCAS, we're also going to follow through the people who've dropped out, we're also going to follow through the people who have opted out because they've decided that after all they might not go to university, or have decided that maybe they'll study part time at the Open University instead of doing it part time instead of doing it full time, which I understand increasing numbers of young people are doing. And we'll be following through people who don't get the grades, and can't go on at this stage, and we're going to see what implications that has and what happens to them. Will they go on and re-try higher education later, or will they end up developing successful careers without having gone through higher education – it's very interesting and we don't know very much about that cohort, that group, but we will know more as a result of this study

H: Of course now if you still want to take part in this survey there is still time to do it. Ladies what is the website again?

J: www.hecsu.ac.uk

H: Ok so they're still looking for applicants, you've still got until the end of October to do that, and you could win a share of £40,000, so get onto that website now and good luck in your higher education. Professor Kate Purcell and Jane Artez thank you very much for joining me today

J: Thank you

K: Thank you

H: It's been very educational for myself, and I might even look into it in a few days time, you never know

J: You might try the Prospects website too

H: I'll have a look at that, what's that one

J: That's another one that's really good

H: Ok. Have you got the address for that one?

J: www.prospects.ac.uk

H: There we

J: That's the sister organisation

H: Perfect, thank you very much for coming in today

J / K: Thank you

H: We hope you've learned some more about this. Remember we've got more webchats on the way as well for you in a few days time. Whatever you're doing good luck with everything that you do do in higher education, and don't try and bow out a little bit too early, do enjoy it, and like the ladies say, do have a gap year if you feel like you need to. But get onto that website again, www.hecsu.ac.uk. Thanks for joining us on webchats today, my name's Tim Litchfield, we'll see you next time

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