Commenting on the Department for Education second experimental release of Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) data, University Alliance Chief Executive Maddalaine Ansell said:
“This new dataset offers a valuable opportunity to improve upon existing measures of graduate outcomes, particularly the Destination of Leavers of Higher Education (DLHE) survey of graduates three years after leaving university.
“LEO, if properly contextualised to take into account local and regional labour markets, has the potential to provide useful information for prospective students choosing courses once the time lag issue has been addressed: currently it only includes data which is eight years out of date. If used as part of TEF, it should also be benchmarked. Since salary varies according to geography, subject studied and even parental income, raw earnings data should not be used to measure outcomes as part of the Teaching Excellence Framework.
“Alliance institutions have performed very strongly on the measures for graduates in employment and further study – testament to our strong focus on employability, extensive links with employers and efforts to align our programmes closely with the needs of industry.”
Notes to editors:
The government issued the second experimental release of government data on the earnings and outcomes of graduates. The Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) data release can be found here.
