2010/11 RGCC launches

This year's Recruiters' Guide to Courses & Campuses was launched by Work's Simon Howard and Real World's Darius Norell at London's Design Centre on the afternoon of Wednesday 21^st July.

The guide, a joint production between Work and Real World, is now in its sixth year.  Based on the analysis of data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency, the latest version confirms "some remarkably consistent trends and some depressingly consistent themes."

The analysis provides a very clear illustration of the nature of university education in 2010, spanning everything from institutions, courses and results to issues of gender, ethnicity and socio-economic background.

One of the survey's recurring themes is the strong lack of equivalence between different degree results, courses and institutions.  (For example, 77% of people studying history or languages come away with at least a 2:1, compared to just 55% in business studies.  And while 92% of Oxford students achieve at least a 2:1, the figure at Brunel is just 67%.)

But perhaps the most significant findings come under the category of "inadvertent discrimination," particularly in the context of this year's sharp spike in the proportion of graduate employers (now more than three-quarters of AGR member firms) applying the ‘blunt instrument' of a minimum 2:1 degree entry qualification.  Simply by imposing this requirement, employers will already have tilted their response towards a white, female, privately-educated, middle-class cohort - hardly the best way to promote diversity, and in these highly litigious times a potential invitation to claims of indirect discrimination.

The statistics also reveal how employers who focus exclusively on elite universities may be missing out on significant sources of talent from other, less fashionable institutions.

The full report, supported and endorsed by the Association of Graduate Recruiters, covers every university in the UK, providing data on the number of students per course, their A-level and degree grades, gender and ethnicity split, and more.  Additional detail is also available for sectors such as finance, law, engineering, IT and diversity.