Recruiting an Elite? Employers' perceptions of graduate education and training

Much has been written about what employers think about the graduates our universities produce. The research base on this topic is not without its problems, however. This article takes as its starting point the key shortfalls of research into employer requirements of higher education, setting them within the wider context of research and policy documents on the subject. A new empirical data set is then presented which represents a new methodology aimed at moving beyond the problematic methods used by previous research to measure the nature of employer demand for and satisfaction with their new graduate recruits. There are some striking findings, not least the problematic status in the eyes of employers of the skills Dearing describes as 'key'. More importantly, however, the relationship between the institutions employers recruit from, the skills and subjects they prefer are, for the first time, analysed in relation to their statistical association with actual graduate performance. The research provides empirical insights into a number of policy debates in higher education. A clear hierarchy of institutions is apparent among employers rendering problematic the notion of a 'flat tuition fee' currently favoured and now introduced by government. This hierarchy of institutions is underlined by statistical findings concerning the existence of a graduate performing elite recruited from particular institutions by employers. The relationship between particular attributes of graduates, whether skills or subject based, is statistically analysed with emerging themes across different sectors of the economy. The future recruitment intentions of employers are analysed against the backdrop of employers' perceptions of graduate quality. The article concludes with two observations. Firstly, the skills requirements of employers are clearly changing, one might even say converging. Secondly, the claim of an emerging 'skills gap' in highly qualified personnel is far from borne out from the data collated by this survey.