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What do Foundation Degree students do? (Winter 08/09)

What do Foundation Degree students do?

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Summary

There are about 10,000 Foundation Degree students studying in University of Plymouth Colleges. With the support of the University’s HELP CETL 1 , the University Careers Service has been finding out about the motivations and early career progression of FD graduates. Here, Marc Lintern and Helen Hicks outline some of the main findings from the second of three studies that they have undertaken.

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Foundation Degrees

Foundation Degrees (FDs) are intended to be designed in partnership with employers to meet the needs of the workforce. They integrate academic and work-based learning to equip learners with the knowledge, understanding and skills relevant to employment. A full-time course will usually take two years to complete. Students don’t necessarily need traditional academic qualifications to gain entry to a course (www.fdf.ac.uk). Those studying on Foundation Degree programmes also have the opportunity to ‘top-up’ to a Bachelors degree by studying for an additional year.

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University of Plymouth Colleges (UPC)

UPC is a partnership between the University of Plymouth (UoP) and over twenty colleges distributed across the South West of England delivering higher education to students in their local area. From a modest start in 1989 with just 450 students, UPC now has about ten thousand students studying hundreds of different programmes across the South West, although mainly in Devon and Cornwall. The UPC partnership gives local people an opportunity to study on their doorstep and it is believed, although not proven, that many of these will want to then work in the same local area.

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Graduate jobs

With the expansion of higher education and resulting increase in number of graduates, graduates now enter a far wider range of jobs than in the past, and as a result, the view of what is a graduate job has been broadened. The generally accepted classification by Elias and Purcell (2004) of a graduate job includes not only traditional graduate jobs, but also modern, new and niche graduate jobs.

Modern graduate jobs include the newer professions, chartered accountants, primary school teachers, software engineers and journalists. New graduate jobs are those to which large numbers of graduates are now recruited and the most common entry route is with a degree. These jobs include social workers, advertising managers and clothing designers. Finally, niche graduate jobs are those that are often carried out by non-graduates but include specialisms that require skills and knowledge at a graduate level. These include construction managers, insurance underwriters, nurses and actors.

All other jobs that graduates do are classified as non-graduate. This does not mean that it is not appropriate for a graduate to be doing a non-graduate job, or that they would not be content, but simply means that a degree is rarely, if ever, required to obtain these jobs. When describing graduate jobs in this article, it is within this broad range of definitions.

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The labour market for graduates in the South West

The South West is a region dominated by micro businesses, employing fewer than ten people, and has a largely rural landscape, particularly as you move further west away from the main urban centres of Bristol and Bath. It is generally perceived by graduates to be a nice place to live and to study but not to be a good place to start a graduate career (Perryman et al. 2003) when you factor in issues such as poor quality public transport in the rural areas and high living costs. Despite this, around 10,000 new graduates find work in the region each year and earnings for recent graduates are more favourable than in many other regions.

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Methods

Information for this study was obtained from the annual Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education Survey (DLHE). This survey, carried out by all higher education institutions, surveys students six months after graduation using a standard methodology prescribed by HESA (Higher Education Statistics Agency). The response rate achieved through the DLHE Survey is very high, above 80%.

In addition, three complementary methods were used in this study:

  • 453 FD graduates from UPC, contacted via the DLHE telephone survey, were asked additional multiple-choice questions
  • Data from UPC was also compared with that of FD graduates nationally using data supplied by HESA
  • Data from FD graduates after one year in, or seeking employment, was compared with FD graduates who had ‘topped-up’ to a Bachelors degree

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Motivations

The main motivation for studying expressed by FD graduates was to benefit their careers; most students reported that their FD fitted their career plans exactly. The opportunity to study an FD at their local college was also highly valued, not just as a higher education experience, but as a route to a ‘better’ career. This was the same whether they planned to work after FD graduation or to ‘top-up’ to a Bachelors Degree. Anecdotal observations during this research suggested that for many students, the availability of an FD locally, gave them an opportunity to study at an HE level they might not otherwise have taken.

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Attitude to relocating and its impact on employment outcomes

Another strong factor, motivating students to study for an FD, was that the course was available locally. When questioned, many of the FD graduates in this study said they were willing to relocate after graduation, yet, the figures show that in the first six months after graduating, few had actually left the South West. With a very high proportion of FD students studying at their local college, it is perhaps not surprising that many then seek future opportunities locally. Fewer graduates had relocated to work than to ‘top up’ their degree. This means that UPC appears to be supplying the local labour market with new employees educated to HE level: one in five UPC FD graduates in work had obtained a graduate level job in the South West within six months.

The South West labour market is known to have relatively few graduate opportunities, especially in the far South West, and so it is not surprising that FD graduates did not have high levels of graduate-level employment. Comparing the employment outcomes of FD graduates from UPC with those from institutions nationally supports this; fewer UPC graduates were employed in graduate-level jobs than the national average.

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Graduate satisfaction

Reassuringly, despite the relatively low proportion in graduate jobs, FD graduates surveyed expressed high levels of satisfaction about their employment. Two-thirds said that their job fitted their career plans exactly. This high level of satisfaction doesn’t seem to fit comfortably with spending two years studying to achieve career progression whilst being employed in a job not requiring their FD. It is possible that this may be because the graduates in this study had low expectations of the jobs available to them, or some students may have made a compromise between their career expectations in favour of lifestyle or personal commitments. The high levels of satisfaction about relatively poor employment outcomes might also help to explain why such a high proportion of FD students stated that their FD course ‘fitted their career path exactly’ despite choosing from a limited range of options available at their nearest college.

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Motivation of those going into employment

Among older students a higher proportion entered work than topped up. This may be because they already had jobs, but it is also possible that they hadn’t continued their studies because they had other commitments or were less able to relocate to a final year that was not available locally.

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Progressing to a Bachelors Degree

The majority of FD students from UPC continued their studies by ‘topping up’ to a Bachelors degree at the University of Plymouth. There certainly appear to be differences between the career progression from UPC and that of FD graduates nationally. When comparing data from UPC with national data it was found that substantially more UPC graduates continued with their studies than national figures suggest. When surveyed, the main reason students gave for ‘topping up’ was that this was believed to be either ‘essential’ or ‘desirable’ for their career.

Younger students were more likely to 'top up' than mature students; most continued their studies at the University of Plymouth, this might be because it is the obvious and most straightforward progression route, but may also reflect a general reluctance to relocate.

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Employment benefits of a Bachelors Degree

FD graduates who had decided to ‘top up’ to a Bachelors degree were slightly more likely to be in a graduate occupation six months after graduating, than their contemporaries who had spent eighteen months in the labour market after graduating from their FD, although the differences were not large. Those who decided not to ‘top up’ and who graduated with an FD only, were more likely to be in non-graduate employment, although levels of unemployment were similar. It is important to remember that first destinations at six months give only an indication of the value of higher education. Studies of graduate employment suggest that many graduates take up to two-and-a-half years to find jobs that use their graduate level skills (Elias et al. 1999). This may also be true of FD graduates. It is also not currently known whether employers view FD graduates as being the same calibre as conventional graduates but this might also help determine their employment opportunities

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Further studies

Marc and Helen are currently working on a third study of FD students, looking in more detail at their career progression and motivation behind studying for an FD, and are also about to embark on a study investigating the longer term career progression of FD students. In particular, have graduates careers progressed? are they using their FDs? and are they still satisfied with their higher education experience and career outcomes?

If you would like more information about this or other FD studies, visit the University of Plymouth Careers website http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/careers/dlhe

1. The Higher Education Learning Partnerships CETL (Centre of Excellence in Teaching & Learning) is one of four CETLs based at the University of Plymouth. For more information about their programme, visit http://www.help-cetl.ac.uk

References

Elias, P., A. McKnight, J. Pitcher, K. Purcell and C. Simm (1999). Moving On: graduate careers three years after graduation. University of Warwick, Institute for employment research.

Elias, P. and K. Purcell (2004). SOC(HE): A classification of occupations for studying the graduate labour market, from Graduate Occupations, Warwick Institute for Employment Studies.

Perryman, S., E. Pollard, J. Hillage and L. Barber (2003). Choices and Transitions: A Study of the Graduate Labour Market in the South West, HERDA-SW.