UK: A route to a job

British students are turning to the sciences, engineering and vocational courses at the expense of humanities and social sciences. This trend is in line with the Labour Government's drive to see universities treating employability as a "core part of their mission".

Last month, the government's education ministers launched a consultation document, Higher Education at Work - High Skills: High Value, which declared: "We believe it is reasonable to expect universities to take responsibility for how their students are prepared for the world of work." The consultation paper also emphasised the importance of increasing the supply of science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduates by stimulating an early interest at school through to the workplace.

Latest figures from UCAS, the universities and colleges admissions service, showed that applications for mathematics courses were up 9.3%, physics up 9.8%, chemistry up 8.8%, civil engineering up 10.3%, mechanical up 4.6% and general up 5.9%.

Dr Wendy Piatt, Director-General of the Russell Group of 20 research-led universities, welcomed the increase. Piatt said these were not often considered to be vocational yet graduates in these subjects commanded a high wage in the labour market, particularly if they had studied in one of her group's institutions.

But undergraduates are living in harsher economic times than 10 years ago with the introduction of fees in 1997 by the Labour government, and the further fee increase in England in 2006 under the variable fees system.

Paul Marshall, Executive Director of the 1994 Group of smaller research-intensive universities said: "The effective creation of a marketplace in higher education has naturally affected the choices students make when they embark on their university life and their expectations of what they should receive.

"The increasingly competitive employment environment has undoubtedly influenced students' choice of course, with many choosing courses with a well-defined career path."
His views were echoed by Professor David Baker, Chair of GuildHE, which represents higher education colleges, specialist institutions and some universities. Baker said e saidstudents and their parents were increasingly looking for a return on their investment as they graduated with substantial debts to pay.

GuildHE members had noted a shift towards professional and vocational subjects away from humanities and social sciences. Sociology, media studies and computing were no longer in such demand as a decade ago. Teacher training, especially at primary level, was buoyant but institutions such as University College Plymouth St Mark and St John, where Baker is principal, found it more difficult to recruit maths and science student teachers.

Subject choice often depended on arbitrary shifts in fashion: a popular television series such as Silent Witness resulted in an increase in forensic science students while a raft of history programmes caused more interest in archaeology, he said.

Students are increasingly basing their choice of university on what else it has to offer apart from its place in the league tables and its teaching quality. Marshall said research had revealed that employability skills, often obtained outside university through extra-curricular activity such as volunteering, part-time work, sport, and students' union activity, were most prized by government and employers when they were coupled with high academic achievement.

diane.spencer@uw-news.com