Universities Need To Invest In International Graduate Outcomes Data Before The Headlines Turn Negative

A More Challenging Employability Landscape

For much of the past decade universities have benefited from a relatively positive narrative around graduate employability. While concerns around student debt, value for money and graduate underemployment have periodically surfaced, the underlying assumption has remained largely unchanged. Higher education delivers better employment prospects, higher earnings and improved opportunities over the course of a lifetime. Yet recent graduate outcomes data from both the UK and Australia suggests that this narrative may be becoming harder to sustain.

HESA's latest Graduate Outcomes data shows full time employment among UK domiciled graduates falling from 61% in 2022 to 57% in 2024, while Australia's QILT survey reports domestic graduate full-time employment declining from 79% to 74% over the same period. Neither dataset points towards a collapse in graduate employment, but both suggest that labour market conditions are becoming more challenging. More importantly, these figures largely reflect graduates entering the workforce before the widespread adoption of generative artificial intelligence, meaning the most significant disruption to graduate recruitment may still lie ahead.