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YOU ARE IN » Home page > News and information main menu > Graduate Market Trends > Impact of HE on subsequent learning (Winter 07/08)

What impact does higher education have on subsequent learning (Winter 07/08)

• Summary
• Introduction
• The research project
• The process of learning
• Learner identities
• Relationship between learning and the wider world
• Conclusion
• References and notes

Summary

Rachel Brooks, Senior Lecturer from the University of Surrey, outlines findings from a recent research project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, on Young Graduates and Lifelong Learning [1]. Drawing on data from the 90 young adults who were interviewed for the project, she explores the impact of higher education on subsequent learning [2].

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Introduction

While graduates’ experiences within the labour market have been scrutinised in depth, their take up of further education and training has been the focus of only a very small number of studies. Nevertheless, the interface between higher education (HE) and lifelong learning is likely to assume increasing importance in future years as a result of, firstly, the expectation that all will engage in lifelong learning as a means of keeping skills up-to-date and, secondly, the expansion of HE and the consequent increase in the proportion of the labour force comprised of graduates. The UK’s National Adult Learning Survey has emphasised that graduates are more likely than other groups of people to engage in further learning, and to be motivated by the intrinsic nature of the subject matter [3]. However, beyond this we know relatively little about the learning of graduates as a specific group. This research reported here was intended to start to address this gap by drawing on interviews with young adults across the UK, which explored the relationship between HE and lifelong learning.

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The research project

Between October 2005 and April 2006, we interviewed 90 graduates in their mid-twenties who had studied at one of six HE institutions. These institutions were chosen to reflect different ‘market positions’ and comprised: an Oxbridge college, a ‘redbrick’ university, a 1960s campus university, a post-1992 university, a college of HE and a college of the University of London. Our final sample was comprised of 15 alumni from each of the six institutions, of which there were 58 women and 32 men. Respondents were recruited using a mailshot from the alumni offices of the six institutions, plus adverts on the ‘Friends Reunited’ website. The interviews were wide-ranging but, amongst other things, covered: the young adults’ experiences of HE, employment and any education, training or other form of learning that they had undertaken since leaving university; the meanings respondents attached to work, learning and leisure; and the relative importance of these activities in their lives. We then conducted a series of follow-up focus group interviews with some of the 90 respondents, to explore some of the themes that had emerged from the individual interviews.

Our data from both the individual interviews and focus groups suggested that experiences of HE influenced decisions about further learning at three levels, in relation to: the process of learning; the construction of learner identities; and understandings of the relationship between learning and the wider world.

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The process of learning

Many respondents across all six institutions claimed that one of the most positive consequences of their time in HE was that they had, for the first time in their lives, learnt how to study independently. This was believed by respondents to have a significant impact on future learning, giving them the necessary skills and motivation to engage in further education and training, through formal and/or informal routes:

I think my best learning experience …was going to university and learning that no one was going to do it for me and if I wanted to get anywhere I’d have to do it for myself and learn all the life skills.

(Rose [4], social worker, Redbrick)

Although this transition to more independent forms of study (and its impact on subsequent learning) was both emphasised and broadly welcomed by our respondents, this positive response was often held in tension with a more ambivalent attitude towards the intensity of their HE courses. Indeed, a significant proportion of young graduates talked of a distinct ‘learning fatigue’ at the end of their undergraduate studies, brought on by the exhaustion they experienced in the final stages of their degree. For many of these respondents, this had discouraged them from pursuing further learning (particularly of a formal kind) in the years immediately after graduation, as this quotation illustrates:

One of the reasons I picked my job at [organisation] was because when I came out of uni I suppose I was so mentally exhausted after, you know, four years of studying that the thought of going into a job that involved, like, training for qualifications and things, I deliberately avoided jobs like that.

(Ellie, invigilator and beauty therapist, Redbrick)

Although, in almost all cases, this was reported to be a temporary phenomenon, with most keen to take up further learning at some later point, it does highlight enduring assumptions about a ‘front-loaded’ education system, with many young adults experiencing a significant break in their learning careers at the point of graduation.

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Learner identities

Here again, the influence of HE on further learning appeared complex and multi-directional. For a considerable number of respondents (across most institutions and subject areas), degree-level study had served to strengthen their identity as a learner, through: developing their intrinsic interest in the subject they were studying; increasing their confidence in their own ability to learn; and, in some cases, providing them with the freedom to admit to an enjoyment of learning for the first time in their lives.

For others, however, experiences of HE had been much less positive and, in some cases, had undermined respondents’ sense of themselves as academic achievers. This was particularly the case for some of the young women in the sample, who had attended the highest status institutions. In particular, several had found the Oxbridge tutorial system quite intimidating. Alice, for example, had arrived at Oxbridge intent on staying on to do a PhD and working as a physicist. However, by her final year she had been put off the subject, primarily as a result of her dislike of the way she had been taught:

[I] went into this tutorial system where I was expected to sit with someone I didn’t really know very well and, you know, expound my views and give solutions and talk and ask searching questions and it wasn’t something I could do at that stage so it was a bit frustrating really … My tutorial partner had a similar sort of comprehensive background and she was very quiet and shy and … because she was so quiet as well, it was just, you know, embarrassing silences the whole time.

(Alice, executive administrator, Oxbridge)

Here, Alice alludes to the way in which her academic identity was undermined, partially as a result of the social discomfort she experienced within her tutorials, and her dislike of having to ‘perform’ in the way that was expected of her. This had discouraged her from pursuing further formal study post-graduation.

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Relationship between learning and the wider world

This project provides little evidence to support some of the claims that have been made in the academic literature about the likely increase in ‘disappointment’ and ‘disillusionment’ with education as graduates enter a congested labour market in search of full-time jobs [5]. In large part this can be explained by the realisation (often before respondents had even entered HE) that a degree did not provide an automatic route into professional employment. Indeed, many had an acute awareness of the absence of any automatic correspondence between success at university and success at work. As a consequence, there were no young adults in our sample who were discouraged from further learning because of a general disillusionment about the relationship between education credentials and employment. However, respondents’ understandings of this relationship played an important role in informing their decisions about further learning. Indeed, the same kind of considerations that had come into play in relation to their decision to enter HE (i.e. that without a degree the type of jobs open to them would be very restricted), also exerted an important influence on their decisions about further learning – through the belief that such learning would allow them to specialise and gain more work-related skills, and give them an advantage over other graduates [6]:

There are so many good people out there with degrees, who are all the same, and if you only have one degree then employers would say ‘Ah, this person has two … which makes him stand out’. And so I’ve … tried to collect as many education things as possible now, just to make myself stand out …

(Carlton, solicitor, Redbrick)

My degree has turned into my ticket for a job but I know damn well that if I want to progress up the ladder I’m going to have to do more … I’ll have to do an MBA or an MA in something or, something that will distinguish me.

(Jason, medical sales representative, College of HE)

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Conclusion

There are clearly a number of very important benefits associated with HE – in terms of employment, health, parenting and civic engagement, to name but a few. Nevertheless, our research suggests that the results of the National Adult Learning Survey, which demonstrate a strong association between acquisition of a degree and engagement in further learning, may mask some more problematic issues. Indeed, it appears that the influence of HE on subsequent learning is complex and multi-directional. While HE may exert a variety of positive influences (such as facilitating independent learning), these often co-exist alongside less positive effects, such as the ‘learning fatigue’ reported by many of the young adults, and the ways in which the learning identities of some of the young women in the study, who attended high status institutions, were weakened by their HE experiences. We therefore conclude by suggesting that, while the impact of a hierarchical and stratified HE market on university choices and graduate employment has received detailed attention, further research is urgently needed to explore the ways in which processes of teaching and learning – and their impact on further learning – may also differ by university type and/or status.

References and notes

1. Brooks, R. (2006) Young Graduates and Lifelong Learning. End of Award Report to the ESRC. Available at: www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk

2. These points are made in more detail in: Brooks, R. and Everett, G. (2008, forthcoming) The Impact of Higher Education on Lifelong Learning, International Journal of Lifelong Education, 27, 3.

3. Fitzgerald, R., Taylor, R. and La Valle, I. (2003) National Adult Learning Survey 2002 (Research Report 415) London, Department for Education and Skills.

4. Names of all respondents have been changed to ensure anonymity.

5. See, for example, Dwyer, P. and Wyn, J. (2001) Youth, Education and Risk. Facing the Future. London, Routledge.

6. This is discussed further in: Brooks, R. and Everett, G. (2009, forthcoming) Post-graduation reflections on the value of a degree, British Educational Research Journal.

Content last updated: Feb 2008