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YOU ARE IN » Home page > News and information main menu > Graduate Market Trends > Embarking on HE - Career clarity (Summer 08)

Embarking on HE - Career clarity and skills perception (Summer 08)

• Summary
• Introduction
• Clarity of ideas about career
• Factors associated with clarity of ideas
• Self-perception and cultural diversity
• The gender gap
• Conclusion
• Further information

Summary

In this article, Professor Kate Purcell of Warwick Institute for Employment Research presents some of the key findings from the first stage of the Futuretrack survey, looking at applicants’ clarity of ideas about career plans prior to entering higher education, and how they rate themselves in some of the core skills. The research reveals that applicants had a reasonably clear idea about the occupational direction that they wished to take after completing their courses, although this was related to the subject of their higher education study. The research also finds strong cultural differences in terms of ethnic background in the respondents’ perception of their possession of core skills.

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Introduction

Futuretrack is a major longitudinal research programme on the relationship between higher education, career-decision making and labour market trends. In the Autumn 2007 issue of Graduate Market Trends, we presented some of the preliminary findings of the first stage of the study, conducted in summer 2006 at the time when the majority of respondents were about to embark on higher education (see Embarking on higher education II - Futuretrack 2006: the bigger picture). In this article, we look at some of the key findings in more detail: respondents’ clarity of ideas about career plans prior to entering higher education, and their perceptions of abilities that underlie decision-making and risk taking.

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Clarity of ideas about career

Understanding how students think and plan for their careers is central to the Futuretrack study. Applicants were asked where they would put themselves, on a scale of 1-7 where 1 means ‘I have a clear idea about the occupation I hope to enter and the qualifications required for it’ and 7 means ‘I have no idea what I will do when I complete my course’. Figure 1 shows the distribution of responses. Aspiring students ranged from those who had clear ambitions and well-reasoned career plans to those who were drifting into higher education without having given much thought to where it might lead and/or what they would do subsequently. However, as Figure 1 shows, there is certainly a stronger bias towards the ‘instrumental’ rather than the ‘drifter’ end of the scale. This may well reflect the increased awareness of higher education and the labour force as markets within which participants compete – and where education is seen as an investment by students and their families who have increasingly been required to contribute to its cost.

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Factors associated with clarity of ideas

It is perhaps not surprising that there is an association between the type of course applied for and the degree to which applicants had clear vocational perspectives. Just under 80% of those embarking on courses lasting more than four years scored themselves as 1 or 2, while those doing Foundation degrees or HNDs were the next most likely to do so. Well over half of those who were aged 25 and over at the time of application also had a very clear vocational perspective.

Table 1 shows the results of multivariate analysis of the factors associated with clarity of career ideas. Older applicants, women and those choosing clearly vocational subjects score towards the ‘clarity’ end of the scale. What also emerge from this analysis are the separate effects of ethnicity (Black applicants have a clearer idea about their subject choices and subsequent career plans than White applicants), and social background. The latter effect is intriguing – after controlling for entry qualifications, those from higher managerial and professional backgrounds were less clear about their subject choices and vocational plans than those from other social backgrounds, indicating how many ‘traditional’ higher education applicants move on into higher education as a ‘normal’ part of the transition from youth to adulthood without much thought of where it will lead.

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Self-perception and cultural diversity

We also explored applicants’ subjective assessments of their competence in four core areas of skill: written communication, spoken communication, numeracy and computer literacy, as well as self-confidence.

Our research finds strong cultural differences in terms of ethnic background in the respondents’ perception of their possession of these skills. Over 70% of Black African respondents considered that their self-confidence was excellent or very good, compared to well under half of White respondents and only 39% of Asian Chinese. These assessments are not congruent with educational achievement and clearly reflect cultural diversity, in terms of classifications and values relating to self-evaluation (see Table 2).

As already reported in the Autumn 2007 issue of Graduate Market Trends, respondents were most confident about their written communication, followed by spoken communication, and least confident about their numeracy.1 There are, again, differences between ethnic groups in their self assessment of these skills. Apart from in computer literacy, Black Africans are among the most likely to rate themselves highly and, apart from in numeracy and computer literacy, Asian Chinese least willing to do so.

Asian students in general were more likely to rate themselves as excellent or very good in terms of numeracy (54% compared with 45% overall) and computer literacy (69% compared with 58%). In terms of written communication and spoken communication, Black students were most likely to rate themselves highly ( 65% in spoken and 66% in written, compared with averages of 59% and 60%) – which is likely to contribute to their overall higher self-confidence, along with, perhaps, their slightly higher average age at application.

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The gender gap

Table 2 shows that across all ethnic groups, males were more likely to report a higher confidence rating than females. This ‘gender confidence gap’ ranged from 5% for Bangladeshi Asians to 15% for Black Caribbeans.

Women also rate themselves significantly lower on numeracy and computer literacy. However, they rate themselves slightly more highly than their male peers in written communication - apart from in the case of Chinese Asian women, who are less willing to rate themselves highly than men on every dimension. Female applicants were also more likely than men to rate themselves highly in spoken communication. There is clearly a strong cultural component here, which it will be interesting to explore further as the longitudinal study proceeds.

Our research has found a clear relationship between self-rated written communication and numeracy skills, and application outcomes, particularly the latter. The above gender comparison of accepted applicants is particularly interesting in light of the finding that men had a higher probability of gaining an accepted place, and in the light of the fact that female accepted applicants had higher UCAS tariff scores at entry, on average, than males.

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Conclusion

The majority of respondents to the first stage of the Futuretrack survey had a reasonably clear idea about the occupational direction that they wished to take after completing their courses. This was, however, related to the course of study they were about to embark on. We have also looked at applicants’ views about their competence in four core areas of skills and their self-confidence. Stability and change in these will be monitored as the project proceeds, in recognition of the fact that these are related to access to opportunities, performance and relative success and failure in education and the labour market.

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Further information

See the report Applying for Higher Education - The Diversity of Career Choices, Plans and Expectations, by Kate Purcell, Peter Elias, Ritva Ellison, Gaby Atfield, Duncan Adam and Ilias Livanos, March 2008, or see www.futuretrack.ac.uk. The second survey, conducted one year after the first survey, is currently being analysed and preliminary findings will be available later in the year.

Content last updated: July 08