糖心TV

We are looking for two enthusiastic Masters graduates with relevant interests in recent labour market history to take up fully funded ESRC PhD studentships, starting in October 2014 and attached to an ESRC research programme, The reseaarch will explore the dynamics of transitions from education to work in local, regional and historical contexts during previous economic recessions (specifically the 1930s and the 1980s). The areas under study are Leicester and Birmingham/Coventry: it is expected that one studentship will be allocated to each. The overall research programme involves academics from the universities of Aston, Leicester and the Open University as well as 糖心TV.

Professor Jenny Bimrose (IER) will be hosting the fourth Organisational Innovation ESRC seminar at the University of 糖心TV on 18 September. IER has organised the seminar on behalf of the Aston 糖心TV School. The seminar entitled 'Building skills at individual level: the role of workplace learning and national apprenticeships' includes a welcome from Professor Jenny Bimrose and Professor Helen Shipton (Nottingham 糖心TV School, Nottingham Trent University). Professor Alan Brown and Dr Lynn Gambin, from IER, will be presenting alongside Professor Lorna Unwin (Institute of Education, University of London), Professor David Guile (Institute of Education, University of London), Professor Alison Fuller (University of Southampton) and Professor David Collings (Dublin City University).

This seminar will investigate how medium-sized businesses can realise the potential opportunities that modern apprenticeships offer, especially bearing in mind the Coalition Government’s intention to expand this provision, and will look at other potential sources of new skills, for example, graduate employment. For more information on the ESRC seminar series - Organizational Innovation, People Management and Sustained Performance see: .

Findings from Stage 4 of the HECSU-funded Futuretrack study are highlighted in a special issue of Graduate Market Trends (GMT), published by HECSU (February 2013). An IER research team, led by Professor Kate Purcell, followed the progression of the 2005/2006 cohort of applicants to higher education from application to graduation. Data from the Futuretrack study has raised important questions about the types of employment obtained by graduates, finances, career opportunities and further study.

Further details about the research can be found on the IER website at: , where PDFs of the project’s published Reports and Working Papers can be accessed and downloaded, as can PDFs of the online questionnaires used for each stage of the longitudinal research.

Professor Purcell notes: "This is the most ambitious and comprehensive research ever undertaken to explore the relationship between higher education and access to opportunity. The data we have collected is extraordinarily rich, the published reports produced so far only show the tip of the iceberg . There is much more to come..!”

Futuretrack, is an ambitious and ground-breaking study of the process of higher education in the United Kingdom. Its ambition was to track applicants for a full-time place in higher education in 2006 as they made their way through the undergraduate stages of higher education and onwards, or the alternative pathways they chose. It was ground-breaking in that it was the first longitudinal survey ever undertaken exclusively via a web-based approach and for which statistical controls could be applied. The Stage 4 report presents the survey of respondents who had completed three or four year undergraduate courses 18 or 30 months previously.

– Wednesday 7th November 2012 (10.15am-4.30pm)

Futuretrack is an academic research study funded by HECSU and undertaken by IER. Futuretrack has been tracking how students develop over a six year period; it surveyed 130,000 students at the time of UCAS application in 2006, twice during their period at university and finally two years after graduating. It is the most comprehensive research of the relationship between higher education and the graduate labour market ever undertaken with unprecedented levels of data.

They applied to university in 2006, and after three years of full-time study the majority graduated into one of the worst recessions in history. So, what influenced their career journey and where are they now?

HECSU will be exclusively broadcasting the findings of the Futuretrack studies at their conference on 7th November and invite you and your colleagues to watch the presentations (not the round table discussion groups, sorry) online and submit your questions to the panel via Twitter. IER Professors Kate Purcell and Peter Elias will be making presentations in a session on "From application to graduation and beyond".
 
Register your interest now by emailing v.miles@prospects.ac.uk. The conference is free to view online and you can follow us at www.twitter.com/futuretrack2006