UK
There are two things out today which suggest where you should have gone/be going to university in the UK.
Thing one is the Guardian’s university league table. This offers a ranking by university and by universities with the best career prospects.
Thing two is a new report from research company High Fliers (known also for its reports on graduate recruitment trends), which has ranked universities according to expected starting salaries and students with a job offer.
According to the Guardian, the UK’s top ten universities, in descending order are: Cambridge, Oxford, the LSE, St. Andrews, Warwick, UCL, Durham, Lancaster, Bath and Exeter.
Also according to the Guardian, the UK universities with the best career prospects (defined as the % of graduates who are in graduate level jobs or studying further within six months of graduation) are:
(Source: Guardian)
Meanwhile, High Fliers has ranked the percentage of this year’s graduates who’ve received job offers (as opposed to those who’ve received job offers and are studying). This suggests LSE, Oxford and Cambridge students are most employable. Notably, students with job offers are in a very small minority this year.
(Source: High Fliers)
Finally, High Fliers has ranked UK universities according to how much finalists expect to earn in their first job. LSE and Oxford graduates are most optimistic about their initial earning prospects. Students at Cardiff expect to earn £10k less from their first job than students at the LSE.
What this information tells you is that smart kids tend to go to these universities. They select the best and those people go on to outperform. That is not surprising. It does not mean that, if you are bright and you choose Sheffield, you will, in the end, perform less well.
Charlie is of course a garduate of the University of Life whereas I am a graduate of the School of Hard Knocks. Neither of these illustrious institutions are on the lists above however they are both highly recommended if you should want to move to a small provincial town with 3 Michelin star restaurants, 6 star hotels, etc.
I am intrigued as to how old are the stats the Guardian uses to work this out?
In the methodology it doesn’t say…
“h. Career Prospects
The employability of graduates is assessed by looking at the proportion of graduates who find graduate-level employment, or study full time, within 6 months of graduation. Graduates who report that they are unable to work are excluded from the study population, which must have at least 25 respondents in order to generate results.”
It certainly isn’t from the 2011 cohort, as that data would need to be available for analysis. So this is from 2010 I would guess?
And High Fliers only surveys 17,000 final year undergraduates from 30 Universities? Even by rough calculations 17k students from 30 Universities is a pretty low response.
Could efinancial look into this a bit more, perhaps analyse the way surveys are conducted?