University of Huddersfield to play major role in review

Thu, 22 Oct 2015 11:03:00 BST

Paul Youngson Dr Paul Youngson, Head of Planning and Timetabling in Planning and Information Services, has been selected to represent English universities in the government’s review of how graduate employment data is handled.

In the spring the government changed the law to allow the department of Business Innovation and Skills to obtain data on graduates’ salaries from their tax records (Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill 2015).  The government hopes that this HMRC data can be used to justify the existence and measure the effectiveness of Higher Education providers.  The Universities Minister’s speech on this subject provides more information: Teaching at the heart of the system

The Higher Education Statistics Agency has been tasked with reviewing the information available to prospective students, universities and government departments in light of this regulatory change and has selected Dr Paul Youngson to play a major role in that review by representing the major English Universities and of course the University of Huddersfield.

When asked about his selection Paul commented: “I have always taken graduate success very seriously and have worked at ensuring that the whole community understands the importance and potential of this. I was the Editor of the very successful national publication ‘What do graduates do?’ for two years. I created the sector-leading ‘Graduate Employment-Market Statistics (GEMS)’ software package which is now installed at 15 universities.  I was very pleased to have won the Times Higher Education Leadership and Management Award in 2011 for my destinations’ data to improve the success of University of Huddersfield graduates.

“Although the University of Huddersfield is an exceptional University in terms of getting graduates into great jobs and punches above its weight for the average salary of its graduates, my belief is that the definition of graduate success is about so much more than the salary they are able to command and I will be arguing that when measuring graduate success, the government will need to take into account the value added to a student throughout their Higher Education experience and not just their ability to pay back their student loan.”

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