(england). - eric · michael shattock, registrar, university of warwick professor richard shaw,...

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ED 422 479 CE 077 000

AUTHOR Watts, A. G.TITLE Strategic Directions for Careers Services in Higher

Education. NICEC Project Report.INSTITUTION National Inst. for Careers Education and Counselling,

Cambridge (England).; Careers Research and Advisory Centre,Cambridge (England).

SPONS AGENCY Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services, Sheffield(England).

ISBN ISBN-0-9514865-1-9PUB DATE 1997-06-00NOTE 60p.; "An independent consultative report prepared for the

Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services."AVAILABLE FROM AGCAS Administrative Manager, Careers Advisory Service,

University of Sheffield, 8/10 Favell Road, Sheffield S3 7QX,England (10 British pounds).

PUB TYPE Reports Research (143)EDRS PRICE MF01/PC03 Plus Postage.DESCRIPTORS *Career Counseling; *Career Planning; Check Lists; College

Programs; *College Role; Cooperative Planning; EducationWork Relationship; Educational Policy; *Employment Services;Foreign Countries; Higher Education; Information Technology;Labor Market; Lifelong Learning; Models; Partnerships inEducation; *Program Design; *Strategic Planning

IDENTIFIERS *United Kingdom

ABSTRACTHigher education career services are more strongly developed

in the United Kingdom than in other European countries. Increasing numbers ofstudents and pressures on university budgets and recent major transformationsin the structures of work and career (including reduced recruitment intograduate training programs in large companies and erosion of the notion ofspecific graduate-level jobs) have resulted in reconsideration of theinstitutional role of career services. Various options, including theminimalist, outsourcing, and devolution options, have been explored. Careerservices are also being reexamined in a national policy context. Pressures onthe traditional core activities of career services--individual and groupguidance, information, and employer liaison and placement--are changing theirnature and posing questions about their future form. Seven strategicdirections for career services have been identified. Four (the integratedguidance model, integrated placement model, curriculum model, and learningorganization model) are based on stronger embedding within the institution.Three (the extended support model, lifelong guidance model, and alumni model)are based on delivering career services after graduation. (Appended are achecklist of strategic issues and information on the consultation processused to gather information for the report. Contains 91 references.) (MN)

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The challenges to careers services are greater than ever before. Attending tostudents' employability within a more student-driven higher education systemis high on the policy agenda. Careers services have a key contribution to maketo this agenda.

This report identifies and discusses strategic directions for careers services inhigher education, in the light of the changes taking place both in highereducation and in the world of work. It is designed to help careers services,their institutions, the government, and other stakeholders (notably employers,students and their representative organisations), to review the role and realisethe potential of such services.

IAIgIc AI S IThe report has been commissioned by the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services.AGCAS is the professional association for careers services in higher education in the UnitedKingdom and Eire.

The report has been written by Tony Watts, Director of the National Institute for CareersEducation and Counselling. NICEC is a network organisation initiated and sponsored byCRAC. It conducts applied research and development work related to guidance in educationalinstitutions and in work and community settings. Its aims are to develop theory, informpolicy, and enhance practice.

CRACCRAC is a registered educational charity and independent development agency foundedin 1964. Its education and training programmes, publications and sponsored projects providelinks between the worlds of education and employment. Its offices are at Sheraton House,Castle Park, Cambridge CB3 OAX (tel. 01223 460277; fax 01223 311708).

Published jointly by the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services/CRAC.

Printed by The Burlington Press

ISBN 0 9514865 1 9

NICEC Project Report

Strategic Directionsfor Careers Servicesin Higher Education

An independent consultative report prepared for theAssociation of Graduate Careers Advisory Services

June 1997

A G Watts

CRAC

STRATEGIC DIRECTIONS FOR CAREERS SERVICES IN HIGHER EDUCATION

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Project Advisory GroupSir Graeme Davies, Principal and Vice-Chancellor, University of Glasgow (Chairman)Professor-Associate Valerie Bayliss, Division of Education, University of SheffieldRoger Carter, Higher Education Funding Council for WalesGareth Dent, Individual Commitment Division, Department for Education and EmploymentMike Killing ley, Senior Manager (Executive Education), Midland Bank

Peter Moss, Higher Education and Employment Division, Department for Education and EmploymentSir Leonard Peach, Chairman of Court, University of WestminsterLiz Rhodes, Programme Director, Shell Technology Enterprise ProgrammeMichael Shattock, Registrar, University of WarwickProfessor Richard Shaw, Principal and Vice-Chancellor, University of PaisleyHugh Smith, BT; Chairman, Association of Graduate RecruitersDouglas Trainer, President, National Union of StudentsProfessor Leslie Wagner, Vice-Chancellor, Leeds Metropolitan University

Project Management Group

Margaret Dane, Director, Careers Advisory Service, Heriot-Watt University; President, AGCASDr Richard Maynard, Director, Careers Centre, University of Birmingham; Deputy President, AGCASDr Bernard Kingston, Director, Careers Advisory Service, University of SheffieldAnn Collins, Careers Adviser, University of Southampton; Professional Development Co-ordinator, AGCAS


FOREWORD

Sir Graeme DaviesPrincipal and Vice-Chancellor

University of GlasgowChairman, Project Advisory Group

It was with particular pleasure that I accepted the invitation from AGCAS to chairthe Advisory Group for this report. I have always seen careers services as criticalenablers at the crucial interface between higher education and employment. Formost students, a degree is a means, not as an end. Students and government alikeare concerned about the return on their investment in higher education, andrightly want assurance that help will be provided in yielding this return.Universities and colleges have a responsibility to provide such help. It is importantin their own interest that they are seen to carry out this responsibility in a com-mitted and professional way.

This report could not be more timely. The issues it addresses are central to the cur-rent debates about the future role and structure of higher education. I congratulateAGCAS for its vision in commissioning the report, and for its wisdom in askingTony Watts to carry it out. I commend the report to all who are concerned aboutthe relationship between students, higher education and employment. I hope itwill lead to much creative discussion and much constructive action.


CONTENTS

Executive Summary 7 6 Adapting the Core 33Evolution 7 Introduction 33The changing context 7 The traditional core 33The institutional role of careers services 7 Individual and group guidance 33The national policy context 8 Information 34Adapting the core 8 Employer liaison and placement 34Broader strategic options 9 Supplementary activities 37Professional issues 10 Will the core hold? 37The impact of information technology 10 Strategic issues 39

Preface 11 7 Broader Strategic Options: 39I. Within Institutions

1 Introduction 13 Introduction 39The integrated guidance model 40

2 The Evolution of Careers Services 15 The integrated placement model 41in Higher Education The curriculum model 42

Introduction 15 The learning organisation model 43Origins 15 Strategic issues 44From appointments boards 16

to careers services 8 Broader Strategic Options: 45Towards an open-access model 16 II. Post-GraduationProfessional collaboration and 17 Introduction 45

professional development The extended support model 45Conclusion 18 The lifelong guidance model 46

The alumni model 473 The Changing Context 19 Strategic issues 48

Introduction 19

Careerquake 19 9 Professional Issues 51Changes in the graduate labour market 20 Introduction 51Changes in higher education 20 Structures of professional collaboration 51Strategic issues 21 Recruitment and professional development 53

Quality assurance 544 The Institutional Role of Careers Services 23 Strategic issues 54

Introduction 23The minimalist option 23 10 The Impact of Information Technology 55The outsourcing option 24The rationale for institution-based

careers services25 11 Strategic Planning 57

Optimal location within institutionalstructures

26 Appendix A:Check-List of Strategic Issues

59

The devolution option 27Strategic issues 28 Appendix B: 61

Consultation Process

5 The National Policy Context 29Introduction 29 Glossary 62

Recent government policy 29Policy levers 30 References 63

Strategic issues 32

7STRATEGIC DIRECTIONS FOR CAREERS SERVICES IN HIGHER EDUCATION

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

EvolutionHigher education careers services are more stronglydeveloped in the UK than in other European countries.This is linked to the UK's non-vocational tradition, withoccupational flexibility on graduation; and also to its inloco parentis tradition. The UK model is widely regardedoverseas as a world leader in this field, alongside theUSA. Graduates are less likely to be unemployed inthese two countries than in any other OECD country.

The first appointments board was founded in Oxford in1892; by the mid-1950s all universities had such a ser-vice. In the late 1960s and 1970s, they were trans-formed, in function and in title, into careers services.This involved more attention to careers guidance, andin particular to interventions designed to help studentsmake their own decisions in an informed and reflectiveway.

With the expansion of student numbers and the pres-sures on higher education budgets, there has been amove away from the one-to-one interview as the coreactivity. Instead, an open-access model has been widelyadopted, in which students have access to a wide rangeof resources information services, short interviews,computer-aided guidance systems, group sessionswith a long interview available for students needingmore intensive personal help.

Strong collaborative structures have also been developedacross services, through the Association of GraduateCareers Advisory Services (AGCAS) and the HigherEducation Careers Services Unit (CSU). These haveincluded training programmes. A Certificate andDiploma in Careers Education in Higher Educationhave been launched in association with AGCAS, toprovide a formal training and accreditation structure.

The changing contextRecent years have seen a major transformation in thestructures of work and of career. The traditional modelof career was concerned with progression up a gradedhierarchy within an organisation or profession. Suchcareers have been fractured by employers' responses tothe impact of new technology and the globalisation ofthe economy. Individuals now have to take moreresponsibility for their own career, redefined as theindividual's lifelong progression in learning and inwork.

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There have also been massive changes in the graduatelabour market:

ED Reduced recruitment into graduate training schemesin large companies.

ED Erosion of the notion of specific graduate-level jobs.ED More graduates entering employment in small and

medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

These changes have been linked to a huge expansion ofthe higher education system. This has placed great pres-sure on resources. Many students are now dependenton loans. It seems likely that students will in future beexpected to pay a higher proportion of the costs ofhigher education. This will produce a more consumer-driven system.

Meanwhile, higher education is becoming more flexiblyresponsive to the concept of lifelong learning. Systemsof credit accumulation and transfer make it possible forstudents to move more easily in and out of the system,and within and between institutions. The rigid bound-ary with further education is looking less tenable. Thereis however growing institutional diversity on these andother matters. Careers services have to respond to awide range of different institutional agendas.

The institutional role of careers servicesAre careers services an integral part of a higher educa-tion institution, or an additional service open to reviewin terms of their specific costs and benefits?

Employability and career success are major outcomeswhich government, employers and students alike expectfrom higher education. This should be borne in mind inreviewing suggestions for funding services from fees toemployers and/or students, or for outsourcing careersservices to external contractors. Experience so far sug-gests that such fees are viewed as marginal rather thancore income; and that while some limited functions canbe outsourced, those who have looked at outsourcing asa more general solution have pulled back from it.

The key argument against outsourcing is based on thebenefits of embedding careers services within institu-tions. This acknowledges that preparing students tomake a productive and personally satisfying contribu-tion to the economy and to society is an integral part ofthe function of higher education. It makes it possible to


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link this concern with academic planning and with thecurriculum.

This has implications for where such services are to beplaced within the institutional structure. The careersservice can be aligned:

I To other student services. This can work well, but itcan also marginalise the service, with a barrier ofseveral managerial layers before it can gain accessto senior management. It tends to identify thecareers service as a service to individual students,outside the academic process.

C3 To other academic services. This may include staffdevelopment and consultancy to teaching depart-ments, and involvement in academic planning.

To other marketing services. This can link the ser-vice to other services designed to market the insti-tution to employers and to potential students. Itcan produce conflicts between the guidance andmarketing roles, in determining who is the primaryclient.

Alternatively, the careers service can stand on its own,recognising its uniqueness in being simultaneously astudent service and an academic service and a market-ing service.

Whatever its institutional location, the careers serviceneeds to have strong links to senior management if thebenefits of being institution-based are to be realised.Formal representation on key academic decision-mak-ing bodies is also crucial.

This raises the issue of how far the careers service'sactivities might be devolved to teaching departments.The extent of such devolution is likely to vary betweendepartments offering vocational, semi-vocational andnon-vocational courses. It is growing, as departmentsseek to incorporate elements relating to careers educa-tion and to employability into their course provision.Continuing support from a central service is necessary,however, to achieve breadth of opportunity, economiesof scale, and consistency of standards.

The national policy contextHigher education sits uneasily in relation to recent gov-ernment policies on careers guidance. Schools and fur-ther education offer students a dual entitlement, fromthe statutory Careers Service and their own mandatedprovision; in higher education, on the other hand, it isleft to institutions to decide whether to offer a careersservice, what form it should take, and what level ofresource it should have. If the government is concernedthat students should have access to guidance as one ofthe means of yielding the economic benefits from itssubstantial investment in higher education, it should

be troubled by the disparity of current provision, andthe low level of provision in some institutions.

Should strong moves be made towards a more integratedand consumer-driven lifelong learning system, someexisting provision might be restructured into a lifelongguidance service based outside institutions to assure itsindependence and impartiality. This could be seen ascomplementing services based inside higher educationinstitutions, splitting the current provision into the dualmodel familiar in schools and further education.

Alternatively, attention might be focused on policylevers to strengthen the role of careers services in highereducation within the existing framework. Such leversmight include:

O Funding formulae (difficult within the currentfunding structure).Benchmarks on staff:student ratios.

I= A nationally applicable student entitlement.I I

Adapting the coreThe traditional core role of careers services is helpingstudents to manage the choices and transitions theyneed to make on exit from their course in order to pro-ceed effectively to the next stage of their career. Thecore activities comprise:

Individual and group guidance.Information.Employer liaison and placement.

Pressures on each of these are changing their natureand posing questions about their future form:

= Long individual guidance interviews are nowincreasingly complemented by short 'duty adviser'interviews, designed partly to respond to 'quickqueries' and partly to diagnose students' guidanceneeds and signpost them to appropriate resources.This is viewed by some as a serious and regrettableerosion of quality; by others as a welcome movetowards a more student-driven- system, which ismore in line with student self-reliance.

ED Group guidance programmes have been growing,partly to achieve greater cost-effectiveness in theuse of resources.

O Information technology is having a major impacton how information is made available.

CI Employer liaison and placement activities are beingreshaped by:

The decline of the 'milk-round' of on-campusselection interviews.The growing practice by large employers of tar-geting a small number of institutions.The growth of graduate recruitment into SMEs.


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This raises issues about the relationship betweenguidance and placement, and how careers servicescan keep up-to-date with developments across thefull range of the graduate labour market.

Around the core activities, a range of supplementaryactivities has been developed:

0 Additional services for students: pre-entry guid-ance; arranging course-related placements and/orplacements in part-time and vacation jobs; teach-ing accredited career-planning courses and/or sup-porting teaching departments in incorporatingcareers education elements into their courses.

O Making the core activities available to other client-groups: former students; local unemployed gradu-ates; research-contract staff.

ED Playing a broader brokerage role: providing thehigher education institution with labour-marketinformation to assist in academic planning, andemployers with a 'one-stop shop' which will pointthem to places in the institution where their needscan be met.

Extension of some of these activities could lead tobroader strategic options. An important issue for thefuture is to what extent the core will hold together, andto what extent it might be split or restructured.

Broader strategic optionsIn broad terms, there are seven strategic directions forcareers services which could lead towards major restruc-turing. They are not mutually exclusive. All representactivities in which many careers services alreadyengage. But it may be difficult to scale them up withinan integrated organisational structure. There mayalready be alternative roles and structures in place. Someinstitutions may want to carry out these functions inother ways, or not engage in some of them at all.

Four options are based on stronger embedding withinthe institution:

The integrated guidance model, in which the careersservice becomes an integral part of a continuousguidance process available to students pre-entry,on entry, and throughout the student's course, aswell as on exit from it. The process is designed tohelp students to construct learning programmeswhich are related to their career aspirations as wellas being intellectually coherent, and then to moveon to the next stage of learning and/or work relatedto achieving those aspirations. The model is poten-tially strongly encouraged by modularisation, andresembles the approach that has been formallyadopted in further education.

The integrated placement model, in which the careersservice's concern for placement on graduationbecomes part of an integrated placement operationwhich also includes course-related placements, andplacements into part-time and vacation jobs.

The curriculum model, in which the careers servicebecomes part of a delivery vehicle for, or of a ser-vice designed to support academic departments in,incorporating employability skills and career man-agement skills into course provision. This mayinvolve a consultancy and/or delivery role.

The learning organisation model, in which thecareers service becomes part of a service designedto foster the career development of all members ofthe institution: contract researchers and other staff,as well as students.

These models are not incompatible with one another,but there are some tensions between them which meanthat, beyond a certain level of provision, they mayrequire some degree of structural separation.

The other three options are based on delivering careersservices post-graduation:

EJ The extended-support model, under which the careersservice is designed to support students not only onexit from the institution but also in the initialperiod of career development post-graduation. Thisrecognises that many students now defer seriousjob-seeking until after graduation, that many taketime to stabilise in an initial career direction, andthat many need support in finding opportunitiesand developing their employability during thisperiod.

The lifelong guidance model, in which the careersservice becomes part of a lifelong guidance servicedesigned to support graduates from any highereducation institution in their career development:possibly as part of a strategy for positioning theinstitution in relation to lifelong learning; or possi-bly as an opportunity for the careers service's skillsto be marketed more widely, on an income-gener-ating basis.

101 The alumni model, in which the careers servicebecomes part of a longer-term support and net-working service for the institution's own alumni,related to the institution's strategy for maintainingalumni links.

The alumni model is the only one which is stronglycompatible with institution-based careers services; theother two tend to pull away from it towards partnershipwith other higher education institutions and otherbodies.

1 0STRATEGIC DIRECTIONS FOR CAREERS SERVICES IN HIGHER EDUCATION

9

Strongly resourced services may retain a significantinvolvement in activities linked to most or all of thesemodels without changing their current shape. In otherinstitutions, however, it seems likely that what willemerge will be a distributed structure, with a variety ofdifferent units each attending to one or more of themodels. Within such a structure, the careers servicemight continue to be built around the traditional core,with appropriate links with the other units; or it mightsignificantly change its shape and nature; or it mightbecome the co-ordinating focus for a range of distrib-uted services.

Professional issuesStructures of professional collaboration. Through the activ-ities of AGCAS and CSU, a rich range of commonresources has been developed in a very cost-effectiveway. The structures of collaboration within AGCAShave however been coming under some strain, due tothe pressure on resources, the more competitive culturewithin higher education, and the growing diversityof institutions' needs. This raises questions aboutwhether there should be a tighter specification of whatmember institutions are expected to contribute, andwhether AGCAS should adopt a more flexible anddiverse structure.

Recruitment and professional development. The last coupleof decades have seen a considerable growth of profes-sionalisation within careers services. Nonetheless, theextent to which staff hold formal professional qualifi-

1 1

cations is still very varied, and there are importantissues about the extent to which guidance qualifica-tions should be the core for all professional staff orwhether a range of different professional backgroundsshould be encouraged. Other issues include the ade-quacy of managerial expertise within careers services,and the need to provide more routes for career progres-sion in and out of careers services, so producing greaterrotation of staff.

Quality assurance. Some services have taken the initia-tive in responding to the increased pressures towardsaccountability. Arguably, however, institutions needsupport from organisations like AGCAS to providebenchmarks against which they can review their careersservices' performance. The quality standards beingdeveloped by the National Advisory Council for Careersand Educational Guidance may be helpful in thisrespect.

The impact of information technologyIT could make it possible to deliver the main aspects ofa careers service's work through a 'virtual careers centre'available where users are, rather than requiring them tocome to a specific location. The direct human contactprovided in a physical centre seems likely, however, tohave an important role to play for the foreseeable future.Nonetheless, the potential of IT to improve the qualityand accessibility of careers services is considerable, andnot yet fully harnessed. It should be viewed not just as atool or alternative, but as an agent of change.


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PREFACE

This report examines strategic directions for careers ser-vices in higher education, in the light of the changestaking place both in higher education and in the worldof work. It has been commissioned by the Associationof Graduate Careers Advisory Services to help careersservices, their institutions and other interested partiesto review such strategic directions, particularly in thedebates that will follow the report of the Committee ofInquiry into Higher Education, under the chairmanshipof Sir Ron Dearing.

The present report adopts some short cuts. Thus theterm 'graduates' is used throughout to refer to graduatesand diplomates. The term 'careers service' is used gener-ically: some such services are called 'careers advisoryservices', or have another title. I have used the pluralform 'careers service' and 'careers guidance' because it isfamiliar: my own view however is that there is now astrong case, in the light of the changes in the world ofwork outlined in Section 3, for adopting the singularform 'career service' and 'career guidance'; this is on thegrounds that the career is now owned by the individual,who has a single career no matter how varied a form itmay take (Collin and Watts, 1996).

A few parts of the report, notably in Sections 2 and 3,are adapted from earlier work (Watts and Hawthorn,1992; Watts, 1996a; 1996c). The great majority, though,is based on original fieldwork carried out specifically forthe project.

I am grateful to Margaret Dane, Director of the CareersAdvisory Service at Heriot-Watt University and the cur-rent President of AGCAS, for her consistent support andencouragement, and to Li li Goldman and VannessaNichols for the skilled secretarial help they have pro-vided. I am also indebted to AGCAS more generally, forhaving the courage and foresight to commission anindependent report, and to the many people listed inthe appendix who have been consulted as part of thefieldwork. Many of the ideas and insights in the reportare theirs; the way they are presented, and the judge-ments made about them, are my responsibility alone.

Tony WattsCambridgeMay 1997


II

SECTION I

INTRODUCTION

niTri The opportunities open to careers services inhigher education are greater than ever before. High-quality careers education and guidance is now widelyrecognised in policy circles as having an important con-tribution to make to the nation's economic competi-tiveness. Within higher education, issues relating tostudents' employability are high on the policy agenda.The moves towards a more student-driven system couldgreatly enhance the importance of the careers service'srole. The range of needs to which careers services arebeing invited to respond is growing ever wider.

nom At the same time, careers services are facingmajor challenges. The increases in the numbers of stu-dents have not been matched by parallel increases inresources. Many are struggling to maintain their levelsof service. The pressures on funding within higher edu-cation institutions mean that all activities are increas-ingly subject to question and review. The growingdiversity of functions and resourcing between careersservices in different institutions is threatening thestrong patterns of collaboration that have been builtup. It also runs the risk that careers services as a wholewill be judged by their weakest representatives.

1-11-1 If careers services and their institutions are torealise these opportunities and meet these challenges, itis critical that they find the creative space to review pos-sible strategic directions, to determine priorities, and todevelop action plans. The danger is that careers servicesget so preoccupied with delivery they do not find timeto reflect and to plan (see para 7.3). This would be par-ticularly ironic in their case, because their work is basedcentrally on helping students to realise the importanceof reviewing options, making decisions, setting goals,and making plans.

MI CIA The need for strategic planning is especiallyacute because many of the new opportunities mayrequire new forms of partnership and new organisa-

13

tional structures. The question is not just what thecareers service should do, but what form it should take,where it should hive off activities into new units andsubsidiaries, and where strategic partnerships should beforged with other units and organisations inside andoutside the institution.

7115-1 How institutions view their careers service islikely to be a significant indicator of how they seek toposition themselves in relation to the growing concernwith employability and with moves towards a more stu-dent-driven system. Careers services can be viewed assomewhat marginal student services. Alternatively, theycan be viewed as a major strategic vehicle for achievingthe institution's mission and purpose, and adapting tochange.

[:116:] The strategic directions adopted by and forcareers services are likely to vary considerably betweendifferent institutions. This however raises further issuesboth for students and for employers regarding the 'enti-tlement' they can expect. It also raises issues fornational policy, as to whether there should be anational baseline entitlement, and if so, how it can beeffected.

The present report identifies and discussesthe major strategic issues relating to the future role ofcareers services in higher education, and the mainstrategic directions they can take. It is based on inter-views, focus-group discussions and written evidencefrom a wide range of individuals and organisations (seeAppendix B). These represent the key 'stakeholders' incareers services in higher education: students, employ-ers, higher education institutions and government. Thereport is designed to help these stakeholders to reviewthe role and realise the potential of such services.


SECTION 2

THE EVOLUTION OF CAREERSSERVICES IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Introduction=24= Careers services are more strongly developedin the UK than in other European countries.Paradoxically, this is linked to the non-vocational tra-dition within British higher education, with consider-able occupational flexibility on graduation. Around halfof graduate 'current vacancies' are for students fromany discipline (Bee and Dolton, 1990). There is muchless rigid 'tracking' than in other European countries,where there tends to be a more widespread assumptionthat university students have already committed them-selves to certain occupational areas by the nature of thecourses they have chosen. The need for separate helpoutside course structures is accordingly more acute inthe UK.

cm= At the same time, higher education institu-tions in Britain have tended to assume stronger in locoparentis responsibilities than in other European coun-tries. This has been linked to their residential tradition,supported by a grants structure which has permittedstudents readily to go to institutions away from theirhomes. Support structures to help students with theirvocational as well as their personal and educationalproblems have grown naturally out of this tradition.

Origins=Id= The only existing authoritative report on therole of careers services in higher education was theHeyworth Report produced under the auspices of theUniversity Grants Committee (1964). Published shortlyafter the influential report of the Robbins Committee(1963) on higher education, it was supported by exten-sive surveys of students, employers and universities.Just as Robbins provides a basepoint for the DearingInquiry, so Heyworth provides a basepoint for the pre-sent report.

OA= The Heyworth Report noted that up to theend of the nineteenth century, most university gradu-ates which at that time in England meant almostexclusively men from Oxford and Cambridge becameparsons, schoolmasters or civil servants. A few wentinto politics or law or medicine. In general, it was con-sidered eccentric and ungentlemanly for a universityman to go into business. There was no need for careersservices, because the older universities were part of asocial pattern in which dons, undergraduates and par-ents all knew what careers were approachable from theuniversity and how to get into them.

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=2.44.= The origins of university appointmentsboards as they were called in the mid-1960s weretraced by the Heyworth Report to the foundation inOxford around 1892 of an intercollegiate committee setup to pool dons' patronage in the public and grammarschools. It gradually extended its activities to the civilservice and, around 1904, to industry. By 1914 appoint-ments services had been set up at Cambridge and fiveother universities; a further nine followed between thetwo World Wars; and by the mid-1950s all universitieshad such a service.

c2or6= The activities of university appointmentsboards as defined by the Heyworth Report were three-fold:

O Advisory interviews.

I The provision of information about careers, employ-ers and jobs.

Placement activities, including notifying vacanciesto students, and arranging selection interviewsbetween students and employers.

Most of the professional staff had been 'in business, inteaching, or in some other activity closely related tothat on which they were liable to be asked to giveadvice' (p.10). The 'cornerstone' of the service was theinterview: pressures of numbers at particular times ofthe year meant that there were often long waiting listsfor such interviews. While the professional staff tendedto stress the advisory side of their role, few had anytraining for it. For many students, job-finding was theservice's only function of any consequence: 'the serviceexists, so far as many students can see, solely to tellthem what vacancies there are and how to get in touchwith those who offer them' (p.44). This included selec-tion interviews arranged with employers on the univer-sity campus, normally in the spring term: whatsubsequently became known as the 'milk-round'.

=1.47-1 The Heyworth Report recommended that theadvisory side of the services needed strengthening,through increased staffing. It suggested that the aimshould be a staff:student ratio of one appointments offi-cer for every 100 final-year students 'available foremployment'. Among its other proposals was setting upa central services unit for the universities as a whole tocarry out functions (for example, providing a register ofemployers) which involved individual services inunnecessary duplication of effort. In short, the reportwas concerned with reinforcing the existing model of


university appointments boards rather than movingtowards a new model.

From appointments boardsto careers servicesIIMOD:111 Since the Heyworth Report, the appoint-ments boards have been transformed, both in functionand in title, into careers services. This has taken placealongside a huge change in the structure and size of thehigher education system. The Heyworth Report wasconfined to a reasonably homogenous university sectorcomprising, in 1960, just 25 universities. By 1995 therewere 89 universities, plus 75 other colleges (of higher orfurther education) receiving funding for higher educa-tion courses (Smithers and Robinson, 1996). Many ofthe new universities have much stronger vocational tra-ditions than the older universities. Their careers ser-vices have tended to be of more recent origin, and lesswell resourced (Kirkland, 1988).

_WM The expansion of institutions has been mat-ched by a massive expansion of students. In 1960/61there were 92,000 full-time first-degree students in theUK (UGC, 1967); by 1995/96 there were 860,500 (aswell as 174,100 part-time first-degree students) (HESA,1996). The proportion of 21-year-olds with degreesrose from 3.5% to 23% during this period (IER, 1997).There was also a large increase in the number of maturestudents (see para 3.11).

MY II II I This growth meant that students enteredhigher education from more varied social backgrounds;it also meant that graduates moved into much widerareas of the labour market than previously. From anearly stage, these changes placed severe strain on theappointments-board model. It was widely criticised forproviding effective assistance for those who had alreadydecided what they wanted to do, but little to those whohad not. Services increasingly recognised that offeringinformation and advice to the decided was not enough:that guidance was at least as important an aspect of theservice as placement, and perhaps more so. They beganto change their titles to 'careers service' or 'careers advi-sory service'.

MCI At the same time, there was a shift in philo-sophical approach within the careers services. Thedesirability of simple advice-giving began to be ques-tioned. There was a growth of interest in interventionswhich laid more emphasis on helping students to maketheir own decisions in an informed and reflective way.Some careers advisers began to change the style of inter-viewing, to incorporate less directive counselling tech-niques (Newsome et al., 1973). This was potentially,however, very time-consuming. There was accordinglyalso a growth of interest in careers education: structuredprogrammes of group work designed to help students to

15

develop the knowledge and competences that wouldenable them to take more responsibility for their owncareer development (Watts, 1977). Working in groupsoffered possibilities for more student time 'on task' foreach unit of the careers adviser's time.

Towards an open-access model

EVIEV Meanwhile, the pressures on the resources ofcareers services continued to grow. As higher educationinstitutions expanded, their budgets were not increasedcommensurately. This was true of careers services too.The Heyworth staffing ratio, never realised, began torecede into the mists of fantasy. Accordingly, in the1980s many careers services reviewed their work pat-terns. They recognised that the traditional hour-longinterview was highly labour-intensive, and not alwaysthe most effective way of using their professionalresources. They realised in particular that many stu-dents' information needs might be met more effectivelyby upgrading the services' information resources andmaking use of computer technology.

The result was, in some services, a radicalredesign both of work patterns and of work spaces.Instead of the one-to-one interview being seen as thecore activity, with a careers library available as a sup-portive resource, an open-access information room wasnow viewed as the heart of the service. Students wereable to come in when they wished, to browse througha wide range of information files, videos and othermaterials, and to have access to personal help not onlyfrom upgraded information staff but also from careersadvisers who were available on a rota 'surgery' basis forbrief informal interviews. These were designed partly tosignpost students to other services where their needsmight be met. Such services might include not only theresources in the information room but also group ses-sions, work-experience opportunities, and the like. Thetraditional hour-long interview was then available forthose students who needed more intensive personalhelp.

LI f This shift of focus was greatly strengthenedby the growing use of computer-aided guidance sys-tems. A number of limited systems had been introducedin higher education from the 1970s. The most notableof these was GRADSCOPE, a matching system availablefirst on a batch-processing and subsequently on aninteractive basis (Wilson, 1980). Then in the 1980s, fol-lowing a feasibility study by Pierce-Price (1982), a majorlearning system was developed - PROSPECT (HE) -which was comparable with the leading NorthAmerican systems and well in advance of systems devel-oped in other parts of the world. It was designed to becomprehensive, including as many as possible of themain components of the careers guidance process; itwas also to be capable of use on a stand-alone basis,


;i1110.111EIMEHIMIESE1111111112119M111111111MI

without any need for support, though it was expectedto be more effective when fully integrated with the otherfacilities offered by careers services (Watts et al., 1991).The active involvement of careers services in its devel-opment significantly facilitated the move towards amore open-access approach (Sampson and Watts, 1992).

WEI WE The organisational changes in careers serviceswere often reflected in physical changes. Traditionally,many services had comprised a small reception arealeading to a number of separate rooms occupied byindividual careers advisers, with a further room for thecareers library. Now, large open spaces were created, inwhich a wide range of resources could be attractivelypresented and work-spaces for individual students pro-vided. There were still rooms for individual one-to-oneinterviews, but these were less prominent.

MCI If ill The extent of the move towards an open-access approach has varied considerably. In some insti-tutions, progress has been limited by constraints onphysical changes. In general, though, most serviceshave been touched by the change to some extent. It ispart of a wider European trend in which the concept ofan expert guidance specialist working with individualclients in a contextual vacuum is replaced, or at leastsupplemented, by a more diffuse approach in which amore varied range of interventions is used, with agreater emphasis on the individual as an active agentrather than a passive recipient within the guidanceprocess (Watts et al., 1993).

Ira IV Through these changes, the level of studentcontact with the work of careers services has beenmaintained and even in some cases increased, despitethe massive growth of student numbers. Under the oldappointments-board model, students using the serviceswere required to 'register'. The Heyworth Report foundthat the number of students doing so varied consider-ably from university to university, but that the nationalproportion of registrants was 66% (UGC, 1964).Kirkland's (1988) survey of nine institutions found that84% of respondents had had some contact with the ser-vice at their institution; 77% acknowledged, eitherstrongly or with reservations, that they were satisfiedwith the work of advisers; and only 29% found it diffi-cult to get enough individual attention. More recently,the 1997 High Fliers Survey of final-year students in the24 universities attracting most interest from nationalemployers found that 75% had used the careers serviceand had made an average of five visits each; of these,four in five had found the service very or quite useful.

On the other hand, Purcell and Pitcher(1996) noted that the proportion of students seekingcareers advice was lower in the new universities. Theyattributed this in part to the greater proportion of stu-dents on vocational courses in these universities, and in

2

part to their lower level of resourcing. A survey of stu-dents graduating at Leeds Metropolitan in 1993 witha staff:student ratio towards the upper end of the rangeshown in para 5.14 found that 60% had made no con-tact with the careers service; just over half of these feltthat in retrospect it would have been beneficial to havedone so.

Professional collaborationand professional developmentWEI IV II Another way of increasing the effectivenessof careers services within constrained resources hasbeen by developing strong collaborative structuresacross services. The first significant step to establishoperational links between university appointmentsboards was the establishment of a Statistics Committeein 1955 to pool information on first destinations ofgraduates and to make them available nationally. Thisprovided a base for the services not only to collaboratebut to achieve media prominence and policy influence.Ih 1967 the Standing Conference of UniversityAppointments Services (SCUAS) was created, whichmade it possible for the services to look at their work asa whole on a national basis. A decade later, in 1977,SCUAS transmuted itself into the Association ofGraduate Careers Advisory Services (AGCAS), with fourprimary objectives:

(a) To encourage and facilitate the exchange of viewsand information.

(b) To foster and co-ordinate investigations and pro-mote improvements in services.

(c) To encourage training in the skills and techniquesappropriate to the work of its members.

(d) To express a collaborative viewpoint.

Meanwhile, the Committee of Vice-Chancellors andPrincipals belatedly in 1972 acted upon the HeyworthReport's recommendation (see para 2.7 above) to set upup a Central Services Unit (later retitled the HigherEducation Careers Services Unit) which would providea specialist resource for common tasks like the collec-tion of vacancy and statistical information (Scott, 1993;Thorne, 1985).

The patterns of recruitment of careers advis-ers have changed considerably over this period, merg-ing two very different traditions. The pattern of the olduniversity appointments boards was, as we have seen,to recruit people with experience in the fields of workon which they were advising. This tradition survivedthe transition to careers services: Kirkland and Jepson(1983) found that 69% of advisers had previouslyworked in the private sector (presumably in industry orcommerce). Careers staff in the former polytechnics, onthe other hand, had often been trained as LocalEducation Authority careers officers (the polytechnics

1. 6STRATEGIC DIRECTIONS FOR CAREERS SERVICES IN HIGHER EDUCATION

were under the control of LEAs, and many had origi-nally been serviced by the LEA Careers Service). Thisbackground has become increasingly common amonghigher education careers advisers. Kidd et al. (1993)found that 51% of such advisers had previously workedas an LEA careers officer.

E2E2=r1 These backgrounds are not mutually exclu-sive, of course. Nonetheless, there have been some ten-sions between careers advisers whose professionalauthority stemmed from their own career experience,and those (often younger) advisers whose authoritystemmed from their specialist guidance training. Theformer can be criticised stereotypically for their lack offormal training in guidance theory and skills; the latterfor their lack of first-hand knowledge of the 'real world'.

C2E2r In practice, AGCAS has sought to bringtogether the strengths of the two traditions through avariety of training and development activities. Its sub-committees and working parties on a wide variety ofdifferent topics have in effect provided opportunitiesfor professional development through sharing of skillsin relation to particular tasks (see para 9.3). This and itsother activities including its links with CSU - haveenabled it to act as a rich network for professionalgrowth.

ClAr An AGCAS activity of particular importancehas been its programme of short training courses toprovide structured in-service training in particularskills. This has provided the basis for further profes-sional evolution. In 1992, a Certificate and Diploma inCareers Guidance in Higher Education were launchedby the University of Reading in association with (andon the initiative of) AGCAS to provide a more formal

17

training and accreditation structure. Designed on anopen-learning basis, they included validation of theAGCAS short courses, accreditation of prior learning,and also new opportunities for distance learning (Fordand Graham, 1994). An important principle was thatcareers advisers should be able to work towards thesequalifications while remaining in post. To support thework-based learning, a mentoring scheme was devel-oped under which trainees were supported by experi-enced practitioners (Graham, 1994).

I The development of a qualification specifi-cally for careers advisers in higher education reflectedthe professional maturation of careers guidance inhigher education. Its flexibility enabled it to encom-pass some of the strengths of the tradition of the oldappointments boards, but finally to set in motion thelast rites for burying its amateurism.

ConclusionEMS] The UK's higher education careers servicesare widely regarded overseas as a world leader. They arecomparable with most USA services (see Herr et al.,1993), with stronger patterns of inter-institutional col-laboration. They are significantly more strongly devel-oped than the comparable services in Australia(Kingston, 1989). In Europe, where similar serviceshave in the past been rare, the UK services are increas-ingly being used as a model for development (Watts etaL, 1993; Raban, 1995). Graduates are less likely to beunemployed in the UK and USA than in any otherOECD country (OECD, 1996, p.237). This is no doubtdue to a variety of factors, but the investment made incareers services in these two countries is likely to beone of them.


SECTION 3

THE CHANGING CONTEXT

IntroductionCII NM The changes in the roles of careers services

outlined in Section 2 have taken place against the back-ground of massive changes not only in higher educa-tion but also in the world of work. These changes arelinked, and many seem set to continue. This sectionanalyses briefly some of the trends which are most sig-nificant in relation to strategic directions for careers ser-vices in the future.

CareerquakeMIR COM Recent years have seen a major transforma-tion in the structures of work and of career. The tradi-tional model of career was concerned with progressionup a graded hierarchy within an organisation or profes-sion. Such careers are being increasingly fractured bytwo linked forces: the impact of new technology, andthe globalisation of the economy. Technological changecontinuously transforms the nature of work organisa-tions; global competition places intense pressure onorganisations to drive down costs, to innovate and toadapt. Government policy has sought actively to sup-port such flexibility through deregulation of labourmarkets. It has also applied market disciplines to thepublic sector, through privatisation, internal quasi-mar-kets and decentralised management, all designed to cutcosts and improve efficiency.

01C CC As a result of these pressures, many organisa-tions have engaged in `delayering': devolving decision-making, and reducing layers of management orsupervision. Clearly differentiated and discrete roles,and the orderly career paths that go with them, areincreasingly being replaced by team-working andmulti-skilling. Many organisations have also engaged in'downsizing': reducing their number of core workers,and seeking to operate in more flexible ways through agrowing contractual periphery. This takes two forms:

(a) 'Outsourcing' and contracting out to suppliers. As aresult, more employees are now based in small andmedium-sized enterprises (SMEs), rather than largeorganisations; and more individuals are self-employed.

Employers seeking more flexible working arrange-ments with their own employees. Accordingly,there has been a striking growth in the number ofpart-time workers, of 'teleworkers' operating fromhome, of casual workers, and of workers on short-term contracts.

(b)

CM= The effect of these trends (see Collin andWatts, 1996) is a profound change in the 'psychologicalcontract' between the individual and the organisation:the expectations each side has of the other. The oldcontract was a long-term relational contract, based onsecurity and reciprocal loyalty. The new one is increas-ingly a short-term transactional contract, based on anarrower and more purely economic exchange. Evenwhere the relational contract survives, it commonlyinvolves exchanging job security for task flexibility(Herriot and Pemberton, 1995). Either way, therefore, itneeds to be constantly renegotiated. Individuals haveto take more responsibility for their own career devel-opment, including learning new skills and knowledge.Security, it is argued, lies now not in employment but inemployability: accumulating skills and reputation thatcan be invested in new opportunities as they arise(Kanter, 1989).

C115=1 These changes represent a 'careerquake'(Watts, 1996c). The foundations of the traditional con-cept of career are being shaken and in many casesdestroyed. In its place, a new concept of career is beingbuilt, redefined as the individual's lifelong progressionin learning and in work. Supporting such careers is amajor policy issue. High-level skills are increasinglyrecognised as the key to economic competitiveness inglobal markets (Porter, 1990). The Confederation ofBritish Industry (1989) has advanced the concept of'careers for all', based on continuous learning through-out working life, as the key to achieving the 'skills rev-olution' Britain requires.

E=3:45:3 Such arguments are closely linked to theexpansion of higher education. The case for supportingsuch expansion from the public purse has been basednot just on existing demand for high-level skills, butalso on the notion that supply may create its owndemand: that 'as more highly qualified persons perco-late into areas previously dominated by persons with-out higher level qualifications this may change thenature of the work involved and in so doing generatemore and better job opportunities in the future' (IER,1997, p.4). Employers, it is argued, increasingly requireemployees who are flexible, can deal with change, andcan anticipate and lead change; higher education candevelop such attributes (Harvey et al., 1997).


Changes in the graduate labour market1=317= Linked to the careerquake have been massivechanges in the nature of the graduate labour market.Recruitment into formal graduate training schemeswithin large companies is now confined to a smallminority (see e.g. Connor and Pollard, 1996). Manylarge employers now also recruit graduates direct intojobs previously carried out by non-graduates. A study oftwo industries indicated that in the steel industry,employers had enriched and upgraded the posts, to thebenefit of the industry; this had though happened to amuch lesser extent in the financial services industry,where many graduates were being under-utilised inunmodified clerical-level jobs (Mason, 1995).

E:318:J The major change, however, is the muchgreater number of graduates now entering work inSMEs. The proportion of graduates available for workrecruited by members of the Association of GraduateRecruiters (mainly larger employers) has fallen fromaround 80% to around 50% over five years (AGR, 1995).A follow-up survey of Sussex graduates found that two-fifths were working in firms of under 200 employees,and 15% in firms of under 20 employees. More of thejobs taken by graduates in small firms were 'new jobs'that had not existed beforehand: an indication of theimportance of the small-firm sector in job creation(Connor and Pollard, 1996).

C319:=1 The SME sector is very varied. It ranges fromsole traders to companies with nearly 200 employeesand mega-growth potential; from taxi firms to high-techcompanies with world-wide reputations. Traditionally,however, small firms as a whole have not been majoremployers of graduates: the Labour Force Survey indi-cates that 8% of employees in establishments withunder 25 employees are graduates, compared with 14%in larger establishments (quoted in Connor et al., 1996).Often, too, they do not know how to make best use ofthe graduates they take on. This is partly because theytend to have a weak management structure, and cannotresource training or supervision. Policy attention hasaccordingly been drawn to ways of supporting SMEs inmaking better use of graduates, linked to stimulatinginnovation: careers services have become involved insome schemes of this kind (see para 8.7).

E:340: At the same time, more graduates are nowentering work based on short fixed-term contracts. Thefollow-up study of Sussex graduates found that only 6%were self-employed, but that one in three were on fixed-term contracts, over half of which were at least 12months' duration (Connor and Pollard, 1996). This islinked to the general trends outlined earlier (paras3.3-3.4).

19

3 41;f4P.,f.,44.v.

Changes in higher educationEnv The changes that are taking place in the grad-uate labour market are due partly to changing demandbut partly to changing supply. The huge expansion ofthe higher education system (see paras 2.8-2.9) meansthat the student population is becoming much morediverse. In particular, there are now many more maturestudents. The proportion of first-year full-time under-graduates who were aged 21 and over rose from 25% in1989/90 to 35% in 1993/94. At the same time, the num-bers of part-time students (the great majority of whomwho were aged 21 and over) were rising faster than thenumbers of full-time students (Connor et al., 1996).

E3Er2 This greater diversity represents a significantchallenge for careers services to respond to the needs ofvery different target-groups. There is also, for example,pressure to respond more strongly to the needs of the4% of students who have a disability (Connor et al.,1996), some of whom require very specific and inten-sive support. The increasing numbers of internationalstudents, too, pose new demands: while as a proportionof the student body they have remained steady ataround 10%, their numbers increased by 40% between1988/89 and 1993/94 (ibid).

E343:13 The expansion of the student population hasplaced great pressure on resources in higher education.Public expenditure on higher education has notincreased commensurately, and therefore the unit ofresource per student has fallen. The value of studentgrants, too, has been considerably eroded. Many morestudents are now dependent on loans, and accumulatesignificant levels of repayable debt: a recent surveyfound that the average level of debt incurred by under-graduates during their courses was nearly £3,000(Purcell and Pitcher, 1996). It seems likely that thistrend will continue, and that students (and/or their par-ents) will in future be expected to pay a much higherproportion of the costs of higher education. This willproduce a more consumer-driven system. It has indeedbeen suggested that such a system should be positivelyencouraged by channelling the remaining public fund-ing through students in the form of credits, to reinforceand support their role as purchasers of the learning pro-vision (CBI, 1994; TEC National Council, 1997).

1:31143 Steps are also being taken to make highereducation more flexibly responsive to the concept oflifelong learning. Its involvement in continuing profes-sional development is growing. More generally, systemsof credit accumulation and transfer are being developedto make it possible for students to move more easily inand out of the system, and within and between institu-tions. These systems, however, are still not strongly


it:1

articulated across institutions, and their relationshipwith the structure of National Vocational Qualificationsis as yet unclear.

11E1:5=1 The concept of lifelong learning, togetherwith the impact of information technology, means thathigher education institutions are under pressure to'reposition themselves within the wider learning sup-port infrastructure which will underpin and resource alearning society of the 21st century' (TEC NationalCouncil, 1997, p.26). Links with work-based and home-based learning are likely to continue to grow.

(IEW The rigid boundary between further andhigher education, too, is looking less tenable. Alreadythere are increasing links and partnerships across theboundary: in 1994/95, 9% of higher education studentsin England, and 29% in Scotland, were based in furthereducation colleges. Existing links include franchising,validation, access courses, and two-plus-two or two-plus-one progression arrangements: they mainly con-centrate on HNC/D courses and professionalqualifications, plus small amounts of degree work(Rawlinson et al., 1996). The Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals has suggested that thereshould be 'a coherent national system for credit accu-mulation and transfer, enabling movement in eitherdirection between further and higher education sothat people can update or add to their knowledge andskills throughout life'. This should allow lateral as wellvertical movement: 'not a ladder, but a ship's rigging'.It should mark 'the threshold of a new age of learningin which UK education becomes a seamless, lifelongprocess, accessible to all' (CVCP, 1996, pp. 8 and 10).

1:341:1 If such a system is to emerge, it will need tobe based on more common funding structures, and onstronger patterns of local and regional co-operation.With the pressures on student finance and the growthin the number of mature students, more students are

studying close to their home: in 1995 nearly half of UKstudents entering degree courses did so within theirown region (UCAS, 1996). In some areas, plans arebeing laid to merge universities with further educationcolleges. To date, however, government policies havetended to inhibit rather than encourage such mergers.

111:821 All of these changes make the higher educa-tion system ever more complex. The moves towardsgreater integration are balanced by trends towardsgreater differentiation between institutions. Some insti-tutions see lifelong learning and regional collaborationas their main future; others are continuing to concen-trate more strongly on national and internationalrecruitment of traditional 18-21-year-old students. Insome cases teaching is the dominant activity; in othersit tends to be subordinated to research. This means thatcareers services have to respond to a wide range of dif-ferent institutional agendas.

Strategic issuesE34:9=1

2 0

Strategic issues for careers services in highereducation raised by the changes in the world of workand in higher education itself include:

(a) What are the implications of the changing conceptof career for the ways in which careers servicesoperate?

What are the implications of the changes in thegraduate labour market, and in particular the grow-ing importance of SMEs?

(c) How are careers services to respond to the greaterdiversity of the student population in higher edu-cation?

(b)

(d) What are the implications of the moves towards amore flexible higher education system, integratedmore strongly into wider structures for lifelonglearning?


SECTION 4

THE INSTITUTIONAL ROLE OFCAREERS SERVICES

Introduction"Cl With funding being increasingly squeezed,

institutions of higher education are scrutinising morecarefully which activities are essential to their purpose,and which are additional activities that might becharged for separately or left to other organisations toundertake. Are careers services an integral part of ahigher education institution, or are they an additionalservice which is open to review in terms of its specificcosts and benefits?

The minimalist optionMIA CV JIM A minimalist view could be that the task ofhigher education institutions is to help students to geta degree, and that what they do with that degree is nopart of the institution's responsibility. Under this view,the core business is teaching, or teaching and research,and those minimal support services which are necessaryfor this purpose. Any other activities which fall outsidethese narrow bounds should be cut, unless their costscan be covered in some other way for example, beingpaid for by their direct beneficiaries.

NV IX MN An extreme version of this view is that thecareers service should be cut altogether, or reduced toan information function serviced by the library, per-haps using Internet services along the lines of those cur-rently being developed nationally through CSU. This isreinforced by the argument that if, as a result of theirhigher education, students are capable and enterpris-ing, they should be able to find their own directionsand their own jobs. It ignores the careers service'spotential contribution to helping students to becomecapable and enterprising. If the arguments about theadequacy of the information function are applied tolearning, they lead to the abolition of all face-to-faceteaching. These arguments also ignore the considerableevidence of student demand, as indicated by usagelevels of current services (see paras 2.17-2.18), andstrongly reinforced within the student focus groups inthe fieldwork for the present report.

114 UP MI If the desirability of a broader careers serviceis accepted, so long as its costs can be met from else-where, arguments might be mounted for it to be paidfor from fees to employers. But:

(a) The effect of this would be that the current student-centred careers service would be replaced by a place-ment service addressed to employers' interests. In

21

(b)

this case, the laws of the market would rule: stu-dents and career options that were less marketable,and/or were concerned with alternative values,would be ignored; in times of recession, when stu-dents' career-entry problems were most acute, theservice would contract.

It would be difficult for a single institution to go'out of line' in this direction. If as a result of beingcharged a full market rate, employers ceased to usethe service, it would be the institution and its stu-dents that would suffer. In effect, the attempt tomarket the careers service to employers as a sepa-rate product would jeopardise its function of mar-keting the institution's 'core product' students.

In practice, therefore, institutions have tended to becautious in testing what this particular market couldbear, and to regard charges to employers for partici-pation in careers fairs, for example, or for hire of inter-view rooms as marginal rather than core income(though in some of the larger services it is now suffi-ciently substantial to fund a post or two). Any moves toextend this could be regarded as restructuring the place-ment function, not the careers service as a whole (seeparas 6.19 and 6.28). It has also been noted thatemployers contribute substantial amounts of time andexpertise free of charge to careers programmes: atNewcastle, for example, it has been estimated that thisamounts to £30-40k per year.

WWI An alternative and possibly complementaryargument is that the guidance and information servicesshould be paid for directly by the students who use themand benefit from them. If institutions continue to be pre-vented from charging tuition fees, this is likely to createmore pressure to identify activities which can beregarded as being outside tuition and therefore chargedseparately. A few careers services do indeed charge stu-dents a small registration fee. Again, however, this isviewed as marginal rather than core income. To chargefull-cost rates would be likely to deter usage, particularlyif this principle was not applied to all other student activ-ities. If the institution has an interest in the successfulcareer entry of its students, this could be seriouslycounter-productive. Again, therefore, no institution hasfound its early reflections on these issues sufficientlyencouraging to give them detailed consideration.

WILIAM The fundamental issue here is whether degreeoutput is a sufficient outcome measure for higher edu-cation. There is clear evidence that in the eyes of those


outside higher education, it is not. Employability andcareer success are viewed as major outcomes which gov-ernment, employers and students alike expect fromhigher education. The government, for example, hasindicated that so long as higher education is fundedfrom the public purse, the rate of return to the nation'sinvestment will be defined largely in terms of graduates'economic impact (DfEE, 1997). Again, it is clear thatmost students undertake a degree on the understandingthat it will help them to improve their prospects in thelabour market. For a higher education institution to failto address this expectation would seem politicallyunwise, and to weaken the marketing of its provisionagainst its competitors.

This would seem to be particularly the case if,as seems likely, students and/or their parents areexpected in future to pay a higher proportion of thecosts of higher education (see para 3.13). In the USA, StJohn Fisher College in New York State has offered stu-dents a $5,000 refund on their tuition fees if they fail toland a job after six months (Times Higher EducationSupplement, 1/9/95). While not going so far as this,independent business schools in the UK charge sizeabletuition fees, and recognise that their students are verydemanding customers: accordingly, the expenditure oncareers services in the London and Manchester BusinessSchools in 1993/94 was £430 and £202 respectively perfull-time-equivalent student, as opposed to an averageof £29 for universities as a whole (CVCP/UFC, 1994).These are somewhat extreme examples, but potentialconsumers of higher education may in future give moreattention to the extent and nature of career supportbefore committing themselves to investing in a highereducation course.

EP 1131:1111 Careers services can indeed be viewed as ameans of promoting the institution, its courses and itsgraduates to potential employers, in ways which alsoenhance its marketability to students. In an increas-ingly competitive market, in which employers are moreand more wanting to target particular institutions andeven departments, an institution which fails to pro-mote itself in this way risks losing its market position.

11141EVINI The main public measure of performance inrelation to employability is the first-destinations 'leaguetable', published annually. These first-destinationreturns are widely viewed as one of the performanceindicators by which higher education institutionsshould be judged (Joint Performance IndicatorsWorking Group, 1994; Cave et al., 1997). They are acrude measure, with doubts about their consistencyacross institutions (due to differences in the effective-ness of tracking procedures). They are collected over tooshort a period: it is widely recognised that a follow-onsurvey two years after graduation would provide a use-ful additional source of information, but issues relating

22

to the cost, data collection and methodology (e.g. sam-pling) of such a survey have not yet been resolved; analternative might be to extend the census data for thefirst-destination returns to twelve months after gradua-tion. They are also much more responsive to the bal-ance of courses (e.g. the proportion of vocationalcourses, and of sandwich courses) than to the quality ofthe careers service. Moreover, pursued too rigidly, theycould undermine both the neutrality of the guidancethat is offered (it may not always be in a particular grad-uate's interest to become employed immediately) andthe collaborative structures of the AGCAS 'mutual aid'scheme (see para 8.6) (which could be seen as assistingthe league performance of institutional competitors).Nonetheless, insofar as careers services are viewed ascontributing to performance in this table, they are seenin concrete terms as assisting the reputation of theinstitution.

For these various reasons, it is unlikely inpractice that institutions will want to dismantle theircareers service. A more realistic possibility is that somemay be tempted to retain a service at a minimal leveldesigned to gain access to AGCAS/CSU resources and toprovide an entry in the prospectus. This would repre-sent a genuflection towards the symbolic value of acareers service, but without any serious intent to delivera student entitlement of any substance. Income-earn-ing from whatever source might be encouraged, not todevelop and expand the service, but to reduce the insti-tution's net contribution to its costs. Such institutionsneed to assess carefully the likely long-term implica-tions of their short-term cost-cutting.

The outsourcing optionWnICIE An alternative proposal for reducing costs hasbeen to 'outsource' the service to an external contrac-tor. This is an option receiving wider attention inhigher education in more general terms: it has beensuggested by some that if institutions are to concentrateon the primary tasks of teaching and research, all otheractivities examinations, accommodation, counsellingand registry functions, as well as careers servicesshould be contracted out. The argument is that this willreduce costs through economies of scale, tighter costcontrol, and reduced bureaucracy.

Within the careers guidance field, a prece-dent has been set elsewhere with the contracting-out bythe government of the statutory Careers Service, previ-ously run by Local Education Authorities. The estab-lishment of a quasi-market has resulted in most of thecontracts being awarded to the existing services restruc-tured as non-profit companies based on various formsof partnerships between LEAs and TECs/LECs. Therehas also however been some expansionism (existing ser-vices being awarded contracts for areas other than their


1231EXIMVOCIPMEAIMUMIUMM-EiratIM

own) and some new entrants from both the private andnon-profit sectors (Watts, 1995; Chatrik, 1997).

amir, A few higher education institutions havelooked at the possibility of contracting out their careersservice to an employment agency, to one of the newcareers companies set up as a result of the process out-lined in para 4.12, or to some other body. Contractingout to an employment agency would effectively meanreplacing a student-oriented careers service with anemployer-oriented placement service, and would there-fore be open to the objections outlined in para 4.3above. This is not however true of local careers compa-nies, and some institutions have been attracted by thesecompanies' contacts with local SMEs and knowledge oflocal labour markets: it is linked to the argument thatthe graduate labour market is not as segmented as itused to be (paras 3.7-3.9) and that the case for careersguidance in higher education being a specialist activityis not as strong as it was. Others examining the con-tracting-out option have been smaller institutionswhich have been particularly concerned about how tomonitor quality standards and achieve economies ofscale, including the benefits of differentiated staffing,with a small service of their own. Buckingham, forexample, invited tenders from a careers company andanother higher education institution, but decided inthe end to keep its service in-house. Some US colleges,too, have looked at outsourcing, but have tended topull back from it (Wertz and Jordan, 1996). In the UK,higher education careers advisers have expressed con-cern about the rigid accountability built into the statu-tory contracts for the careers companies, based uponoutputs measured by the quantity of individual actionplans, and its effects on professional practice.

PCIUM The form of outsourcing which has provedmost viable to date has been the practice of small insti-tutions using the careers service of a larger institution ofhigher education, as part of a wider partnership rela-tionship including validation of courses. This could betaken further: for example, neighbouring institutionswithin the same urban area might merge their careersservices, so achieving economies of scale, more spe-cialised support services, and greater capacity for inno-vation. In a sense, the University of London CareersService provides a model for this, with the colleges fund-ing a centrally-located service on a contract basisthough interestingly, since the colleges secured greaterfinancial independence from the university, the trendhas been for the careers service to strengthen its on-siteprovision within the colleges, and one college (Imperial)has withdrawn and set up a service of its own. It is worthnoting in this respect the report of the Follett Committee(1993) on funding of libraries: it recommended thatwhile there might be scope for local and regional co-operative arrangements between institutions, theresponsibility for establishing such arrangements should

4

belong to the institutions themselves, and the ultimateresponsibility for meeting the library needs of its stu-dents should remain with the individual institution.

AIM Even if institutions do not go down the out-sourcing route, examining the possibility of outsourcingis regarded by some senior management as a usefulexercise for benchmarking quality and for reviewingcosts and benefits of existing provision: attention istherefore needed to alternative ways of providing suchbenchmarks (see para 9.18). If outsourcing the careersservice as a whole is found to make little sense, theremay be some functions that can be outsourced. Indeed,many careers services already do this to a limited extent:for example, outsourcing administrative and financialresponsibility for career fairs or for 'career opportunity'publications funded by recruiters. The same is true ofpartnerships with other higher education institutions:even if full mergers are not regarded as likely to be fruit-ful, there may be some activities for which local orregional consortia are more effective than institutionsoperating on their own, particularly in the post-gradu-ation field (see Section 6 and para 9.10b).

The rationale for institution-basedcareers services4E14: The key argument against outsourcing ofcareers services is based on the benefits of embeddingsuch services within the institution. These benefits weresuccinctly summarised by one service as follows:

I I 'The preparation of students to make as productiveand personally satisfying a contribution to theeconomy and to society as possible is an integralpart of the function of HE institutions.'

= 'The processes of academic and intellectual devel-opment; the development of personal qualities andskills; evaluating one's intellectual and personalaptitudes and skills, and understanding their rele-vance to the world of work; a critical awareness ofthe range of opportunities available after gradua-tion and of how to exploit them; and the develop-ment of a valid sense of occupational identity: allform an inseparable continuum.'

'The sense of belonging to an institution gives aclear focus to the organisation, direction and deliv-ery of career guidance and provides the strongestincentive to its relevance, effectiveness and quality.'

CI 'The ownership by an institution of its career guid-ance provider is the best guarantee that it sharesthe institution's aims and values.'

IV CI WA A further benefit is the organisational broker-age role outlined in more detail in para 6.26: providinginformation on the labour market to assist in academicplanning, and an entry point to the institution for


employers. It would be difficult, if not impossible, foran outside organisation to play this role as effectively.The principal and vice-principal in one universitynoted the value of the careers service being able to 'fil-ter the babel of employer voices', to relate this to theneeds of the university through its close knowledge ofdepartments and of students, and to apply this knowl-edge effectively because it 'knows how to get thingsdone within the university'. They regarded the head ofthe careers service as an important intelligence sourceand a trusted policy adviser. Other institutions, how-ever, have not seen the potential of careers services inthis respect, and have not structured them in a waywhich enables them to play this kind of role.

IP CI 11:11 Careers services have increasingly realisedthat if they are to justify and strengthen their placewithin their institution, they need to pay more visibleattention to relating their wOrk to its policies and insti-tutional needs. This may include attention to objectivesoutlined formally in its mission statement (e.g. com-mitment to international activities and/or to regionalactivities) and to tuning into its 'hidden mission' (e.g.student recruitment needs). It may at times involveconflicts of interest. Wallis (1990), for example, haspointed out that 'our professional objectivity andimpartiality can be compromised if our institutionsinsist.., that intending students are actually encouragedto register for our own courses rather than more suit-able ones elsewhere'. This could have important long-term implications (see para 5.6).

Optimal location within institutionalstructures

CI IL' II If institutions are to embed careers serviceseffectively, this has implications for where they areplaced within the institutional structure, and withwhich other activities they are aligned. Three mainalignments are evident at present.

PC/AIM The first is to align the careers service to otherstudent services, including counselling and welfare ser-vices. This has been particularly evident in the formerpolytechnics, where an influential report by HerMajesty's Inspectorate (1988) declared unequivocallythat 'careers advisory work needs to be seen as an inte-gral part of student services' and that 'a separatelyorganised and located careers service is unlikely to bewholly effective' (p.12). It can work well, particularlywhere student services are regarded by senior manage-ment as important and are headed by someone who isinfluential within the institution and is interested inthe careers service. It can also, however, result in thecareers service being marginalised within a 'portacabinculture' as a bolt-on accessory, with a barrier of severallayers of management before it can gain access to seniormanagement. It tends to identify the careers service as

24

essentially a service to individual students, outside theacademic process.

The second is to align the careers service toother academic services, and to view an important partof its role as being to support the work of teachingdepartments, particularly in relation to the curriculum(see paras 7.24-7.31). This may include staff develop-ment and consultancy roles in support of developmen-tal programmes in careers education or employabilityskills more generally. It may also mean involvement incourse planning, feeding back data on the first destina-tions of students, and on students' and employers' per-ceptions of the employment value of the courseprovision: in some institutions, for example, thecareers service is now a formal part of the consultationprocess for all new courses. Such alignment raises issuesabout whether the salaries of staff in careers servicesshould be on academic rather than administrativescales.

E4M3 The third is to align the careers service toother marketing services within the institution. Kirkman(1982) suggested that institutions should view careersservices as their 'marketing department': 'careers advis-ers need to keep themselves fully informed about whatthe market requires, to ensure the information is fedback to their institutions, and to encourage the stu-dents and graduates with whom they are dealing toappreciate these requirements and to fit themselves tofulfil them'. This is linked with the role of careers ser-vices in promoting the institution, its courses and itsgraduates (see para 4.8). Accordingly, some institutionshave located careers services as part of external/businessrelations. This has the potential merit of linking therecruitment needs of employers to other needs towhich the institution might be able to respondincluding research and consultancy services (see para6.26b). It may also be extended to cover involvementin marketing institutions to potential students, includ-ing schools liaison work, access initiatives for non-tra-ditional students, and overseas recruitment operations.As noted in para 4.18 (see also para 6.16), there may attimes be conflicts between the service's guidance andmarketing roles, in determining who is the primaryclient. On the other hand, there is also some commonground, and the possibility that guidance in its 'honestbroker' role may prove more effective as a marketingdevice than 'hard-sell' approaches.

1111, X a An alternative possibility is for the careersservice to stand on its own, recognising that it is uniquein being at one and the same time a student service andan academic service and a marketing service. This is acommon model, particularly in the older universities.In some institutions it may raise the question ofwhether the service has enough 'critical mass' to flour-ish on a stand-alone basis. It is also linked to the posi-


tioning of careers services in relation to the strategicdirections outlined in Sections 7 and 8.

113174 V Whatever its institutional location, thecareers service needs to have strong links to senior man-agement if the potential benefits of being institution-based, outlined in paras 4.16-4.17, are to be realised.Formal lines of reporting are critical: the fewer the man-agerial levels between the service and senior manage-ment, the more influential the service is likely to be.The pros and cons of different lines of reporting need tobe carefully weighed: reporting to a registrar can beregarded by academics as identifying the service as anextraneous 'admin' activity which top-slices their bud-gets; reporting to a senior academic like a pro-vice-chancellor can mean that, since such posts rotate,relationships have constantly to be rebuilt from scratch.Much depends on theclout' and the level of interest ofthe individuals themselves. It is important for servicesto identify high-influence 'champions' rather than onlyworking with low-influence enthusiasts. A lot rests onthe skill of heads of careers services in understandingthe power structures within the institution, and howbest to influence them. Strong heads of service cancommand the respect among academics and seniormanagement which enables them to influence theinstitution's strategic direction. Institutions which wanttheir careers service to play this kind of role need toprovide salary scales to attract heads of service of appro-priate calibre (cf. para 9.13).

C4123:1 Formal representation on key academic decision-making bodies is also important. In a few universitiesthe head of the careers service sits on Senate: this carriesstatus as well as having functional value. Representationon faculty boards and course committees providesopportunities for careers service staff to act as infor-mants and sources of expertise on graduate labour mar-kets and employer demand, and on ways of increasingstudents' employability. The first-destinations data, forall their limitations (see para 4.9), are a valuable resourcein this respect. Responsibility for the data has recentlybeen moved to the Higher Education Statistics Agency,and the classification changes are widely felt in careersservices to have made the data less useful for guidanceand academic-planning purposes, as well as losing time-series continuity. Nonetheless, they provide a rich sourceof labour market information, and could probably beexploited more extensively, particularly if a strongermethodology was developed for comparing institutionson a confidential basis as has been done, for example,in the case of the extensively-used ALIS system in rela-tion to A-level data in schools and colleges (Fitz-Gibbon,1996). Use of such data can be controversial, particularlyin relation to departments with poor employmentrecords: such departments may react aggressively, to'shoot the messenger', and strong support from seniormanagement is important in such situations.

4

FP UPI Al A further useful management strategy,adopted in some institutions, is to have a careers board.This can be valuable in bringing together the key stake-holders (academics, employers, students), providing aforum for debate and influence, and building up 'cham-pions' for the careers service. The submission of regularreports to such a board provides a mechanism foraccountability and strategic review.

The devolution optionVA tNia A final option is to seek to devolve the careersservice's activities to teaching departments. Some takethe view that links with employability and the labourmarket should be embedded as strongly as possiblewithin teaching departments, and that the existence ofa central careers unit may provide an excuse for depart-ments to offload responsibility in this respect. The rela-tive merits of centralised and decentralised careersservices has long been debated in the USA (Herr et al.,1993; Bechtel, 1993). Decentralisation operates mosteffectively in departments linked to a particular profes-sion or a particular employment area (e.g. agriculture,architecture, education, medicine). In many otherdepartments, however, academic staff are likely to feelthat they have no interest or expertise in links with thelabour market, and this can be reinforced by the weak-ness and/or diversity of such links.

In broad terms, three kinds of course can be dis-tinguished in relation to the core careers-service activi-ties outlined in Section 6 (Watts and Hawthorn, 1992):

(a) Vocational courses such as those mentioned in para4.27, which are linked to a particular occupation,are essential for entry to that occupation, and areviewed as completing preparatory training for it.These departments tend to regard such delivery ofthe core as is necessary, especially placement intojobs, as part of their own responsibility, and only torefer to the careers service students who want toexplore changes of vocational direction (whomthe departments tend to regard as 'deviants' or`drop-outs').

(b) Semi-vocational courses such as chemistry and psy-chology, where the course leads to a wide range ofoccupational fields, but with the expectation that itwill be regarded as essential or desirable for entry tothose fields, and as providing at least a relevantbase for occupational training. Such departmentstend to regard the core activities as being a sharedresponsibility with the careers service.

(c) Non-vocational courses such as English and history,where it is common for students to enter a widerange of occupational fields, to most of which thecontent of their course is irrelevant. Such depart-ments tend to view the core activities as being thecareers service's primary responsibility.


1211/1V Steps can certainly be taken to encourageteaching departments to take more responsibility forcareers matters. The minimal level tends to be a tutor-ial system which acts as a 'first-in-line' support for suchmatters as well as for personal and course-related mat-ters, reinforced by the fact that most students tend tolook to their tutor for a reference to support their jobapplications. This role can be developed further. Forexample, tutors tend to be the first port of call whenstudents are selecting modules, or thinking of changingcourse, or thinking of dropping out, or at risk of failingexaminations, all of which can have significant careerimplications. They are also the most natural sources ofsupport for systems of portfolios and records of achieve-ment (see para 7.10). But tutor systems tend to be veryuneven in quality of delivery, and are in many casesstraining or crumbling under the pressure of studentnumbers. The resource implications of serious qualitycontrol, let alone significant enhancement of func-tions, would be considerable.

DIT3021 Beyond this, some departments have nomi-nated a member of staff as a careers tutor or careers liai-son officer. Often this is little more than a 'postbox'role: displaying information received from the careersservice or from employers, and making other liaisonarrangements. In some cases, however, it may be moreextensive (Watts and Hawthorn, 1992).

E413jrl Increasingly, too, departments are seeking toincorporate elements relating to career education andto employability into their course provision. Careersservices can play an important consultancy and/ordelivery role in relation to such elements (see para7.29). Certainly there is a strong argument for depart-ments to take as much ownership of these elements aspossible. Information technology could extend what ispossible in these respects, providing ready access toexpert systems. The possibility of networking thePROSPECT (HE) computer-aided guidance system couldbe particularly significant here.

D4i32=1 In relation to such course provision, how-ever, the evidence seems to be that departments requirecontinued support from the careers service, partly todevelop and share good practice, partly to provideexpertise where it is needed, and partly to ensure thatthe provision is kept up-to-date in terms of changinglabour-market needs. In addition, departments areunlikely to be able to provide the expertise in individ-ual guidance, or the breadth of contacts with employ-ers, that a careers service can offer. Their knowledge andcontacts in occupational fields directly related to their

2.6

discipline are likely to be matched by ignorance ofunrelated areas, thus unless complemented by a cen-tral careers service seriously restricting the range ofopportunities to which their students have access.

1:4411:1 In general, therefore, it is unlikely that devo-lution of the full range of a careers service's activitieswould be of adequate quality or cost-effective in a largeand diverse higher education institution, especially onecontaining a substantial number of semi-vocationaland non-vocational courses. A possible variant is toadopt a devolved financial structure in which depart-ments charge back for central services. Each departmentwould then make its own decision as to whether it (a)does not offer careers education and guidance at all, (b)provides it itself, (c) buys in the institution's central ser-vice, or (d) buys a service from an external provider. Itis likely that such a structure would produce veryuneven quality of provision, with attendant problemsboth for students and for employers, as well as leavingvery little scope for strategic planning at an institu-tional level.

Strategic issues

14134:1 Strategic issues for institutions of higher edu-cation accordingly include:

(a) To what extent is providing career support to stu-dents regarded as part of the 'core offer' of the insti-tution, or as an optional additional service?

If it is an optional additional service, to whatextent can employers and/or students be expectedto pay for it, and what are the implications of exert-ing such charges?

(c) Would there be any advantages in 'outsourcing'parts or all of the service to an external supplier?What would be the disadvantages?

(d) If it is regarded as part of the 'core offer' and anembedded part of the institution, where is the ser-vice best located within the organisational struc-ture to yield the potential benefits of suchembedding?

(e) What links are needed between the careers serviceand senior management to realise the potentialbenefits of the service being institution-based?

(f) To what extent can the functions of careers servicesbe devolved to teaching departments, and whatforms of continuing expert support from careersservices are needed by teaching departments toensure quality of delivery?

(b)


SECTION 5 TrailTIT. IVA

THE NATIONAL POLICY CONTEXT

IntroductionCSEI= Sections 2 and 4 have indicated the growingdiversity of institutional policies and resource levels forcareers services in different institutions of higher edu-cation. This diversity needs to be set within a nationalpolicy context. It raises issues about whether some stan-dardisation of a student 'entitlement' is needed, and ifso, how it can be delivered.

Recent government policyC512=1 Nationally, careers guidance is now muchhigher on the policy agenda. Its economic benefits havecome to be widely recognised. These include reducingthe cost of drop-outs from education and training andof mismatches in the labour market (Killeen et al.,1992). The Confederation of British Industry has arguedthat high-quality careers guidance is one of the keybuilding-blocks for the skills revolution that is requiredif the UK is to be economically competitive (CBI, 1989).There is also a more widespread recognition of theimportance of careers guidance as a means of makingthe labour market, and the market mechanisms whichhave been applied by government to the education andtraining system, operate effectively by ensuring that theactors within these markets have access to informationon the full range of opportunities (Watts, 1995). Careersguidance is now seen as an important means of yield-ing maximum economic benefits from the govern-ment's investment in education. These arguments havebeen reflected in a stream of government White Papersand initiatives.

C413=I Recent government policies in relation tocareers guidance have appeared to be four-fold (Wattset al., 1997):

(a) Support for guidance as an embedded part of pub-licly-funded educational provision.

Entitlement to guidance from the statutory CareersService, managed through contracts to careerscompanies (see para 4.12), for specified groups ofclients mainly young people.

(c) Effectively mandatory provision for the unem-ployed through the Employment Service, linked tobenefit entitlement (some question whether thiscan be regarded as 'guidance' in the same sense asthe others).

(d) In adult guidance, support for developing a two-level model: a foundation level comprising free

(b)

access to information plus some limited guidancesupport; and a second level comprising a range ofservices (individual interviews, group sessions, psy-chometric tests, etc.) for which those who canafford to pay are expected to do so.

11,4174 Higher education sits uneasily within thispolicy model. In relation to (a), careers education isnow mandated in schools by legislation, and guidanceis already mandated in further education through theFurther Education Funding Council's funding, auditand inspection mechanisms; in higher education, onthe other hand, institutions are effectively free todecide whether or not they regard careers educationand guidance as part of their remit. Again, in relation to(b), the existing legislation explicitly defines the statu-tory Careers Service client-group as including all schoolpupils and most further education students, but asexcluding those in higher education. In a formal sense,therefore, schools and further education offer studentsa dual entitlement, while higher education offers none.

W171.`111 The exclusion of higher education from thecurrent legislation on the statutory Careers Service hastwo main rationales: the autonomy of higher educationinstitutions, and the fact that most such institutionshave historically provided specialist careers services fortheir students. Indeed, in the past, such services havetended to be rather better resourced than those avail-able to further education students. Now, however, thisis no longer always the case. If the government is con-cerned that students should have access to guidance asone of the means of yielding the economic benefitsfrom its substantial investment in higher education, itshould be troubled by the disparity of current provi-sion, and the low level of provision in some institutions(see paras 2.18 and 5.14).

1416= Such arguments will be given added impetusif post-Dearing strong moves are made towards a moreintegrated and consumer-driven lifelong learning sys-tem, with increased blurring of the boundaries betweenfurther and higher education, and with individualsmoving much more flexibly in and out of differentinstitutions (see paras 3.14-3.17). In such a scenario,there would be arguments for policies (b) and (d) andpossibly (c) in para 5.3 above being integrated into alifelong guidance service based outside institutions inorder to assure its independence and impartiality inrelation to educational choices. Erosions of the per-ceived impartiality of careers services within higher


education as they seek to justify and strengthen theirplace within their institutions (para 4.18) could rein-force these arguments: these erosions, seemingly mar-ginal at present, would magnify in significance within alifelong learning system. Such a lifelong guidance ser-vice could be an extension of the existing statutoryCareers Service, perhaps working in partnership withothers where appropriate. Alternatively, it could bebuilt on a multiple-provider model based either on acollaborative approach or on a competitive marketapproach. The extent to which it might involve an ele-ment of fee-paying by the user is open to debate: expe-rience so far is that individuals are unwilling to pay forcareers guidance on more than a marginal-cost basis(see para 8.20), and that many of those who need guid-ance most are able to afford it least.

L.517_1 A lifelong guidance service of this kind couldstill be seen as complementing services based insidehigher education institutions, as is currently the case inrelation to schools and further education. It might how-ever encourage institutions to review the nature of suchservices, perhaps moving more strongly towards one ormore of the within-institution models outlined inSection 7, with the post-graduation models (apart fromthe alumni model) in Section 8 being undertaken by theexternal provision. Its effect could therefore be to splitthe current unitary careers services within higher educa-tion into the dual (partnership) model familiar in theother educational sectors. Some of these careers serviceshave forged links with their local careers companies andother local guidance networks which shoUld make sucha split relatively easy to manage; in others, which havestood aloof from these networks and have confined theirguidance networking to other higher education institu-tions, it could be more problematic.

Cin= An alternative to this model could be thevoucher scheme recommended by the Confederation ofBritish Industry (1994). This suggested that all studentsgaining a place in higher education would be given acredit to cover the costs of careers guidance, actionplanning and personal development. The careers creditcould be used to purchase provision from a number ofsources, including a careers service in their own oranother institution, or the local careers company. Thecredit, it was argued, would make the student aware ofthe guidance provision available to them and wouldimprove the quality of careers services by encouragingthem to compete for custom on the basis of quality.This would, however, commodify and ration careersguidance, and separate it from the educational process.Moreover, the substantial experiments in adult guid-ance vouchers mounted by the government have pro-vided little evidence of their claimed benefits. Therewas, for example, little sign that individuals feltempowered by their use of guidance vouchers. It wasalso not evident that they were currently capable of, or

t

particularly interested in becoming capable in, makinginformed choices between competing guidanceproviders: what they wanted was assurance of high-quality guidance to help them in making informedchoices between competing opportunity providers. Anevaluation by Coopers & Lybrand (1995) concludedthat 'while a charitable conclusion would be that thecase for (or against) vouchers was 'not proven', our viewis that it has been adequately considered, and tested, bypilots and found to be wanting' (p.65).

There are still many unresolved questionsabout all this. The case for a more coherent strategy forlifelong access to careers guidance is now widely recog-nised (CBI, 1993; Watts, 1994a; 1994b; NACCEG,1996). The steps outlined in paras 5.6-5.8 would how-ever require significant new investment from govern-ment. This would be the case even if some marketelements were built into such a model. The governmentwould almost certainly find it difficult to claw back anymoney from higher education funding for this purpose,since the Higher Education Funding Councils do notprovide specific funding for careers services. This mightlimit the appeal of such a strategy to government.

Policy leversE;VUO: If this is the case, attention might return toseeing what policy levers could be used to strengthenthe role of careers services in higher education withinthe existing framework. Because of university auton-omy, the policy levers available at present are limited.The funding councils provide a block grant; institutionsdecide how to spend it.

13 The main current lever is encouragementthrough the quality-assessment systems:

(a) The Teaching Quality Assessments carried out by theHigher Education Funding Councils. In England,for example, these include attention to 'curriculumdesign, content and organisation', which is definedto include opportunities for 'developing generic/transferable skills' and for 'progression to employ-ment', as well as relationships with the 'world ofwork'; to 'student progression and achievement',which is defined to include 'development of...generic/transferable skills' and 'destinationsemployment, further study, other'; and to 'studentsupport and guidance', which is defined to include'careers information and guidance' (HEFCE, 1994).In Scotland, assessment panels have to include an'industrial assessor' who is expected among otherthings to look at student support in relation to qual-ity of preparation for employment (SHEFC, 1996).These assessments have certainly encouraged manydepartments to pay more attention to careers ser-vices, to value their contribution, and to seek tostrengthen relationships with them.


(b) Institutions' own quality-assurance procedures,supported by the Higher Education QualityCouncil. The HEQC (1995) guidelines on a quality-assurance framework for guidance and learner sup-port included attention to guidance for careerplanning both in the on-programme phase and inthe moving-on phase (see also HEQC, 1996b).

It is anticipated that the new Quality Assurance Agencywhich is replacing HEQC will bring these two systemstogether. They are not, however, linked to funding,except in the weak sense that if Teaching QualityAssessments find a department to be unsatisfactory, andno adequate remedial action is taken, the block grant isreduced accordingly (it is constructed on the basis of aformula which includes subject provision).

IL13 ISM There seems little prospect at present of anyfunding formula based on separate funding for careersservices: this would be seen as opening the door to amultitude of such 'special cases', and infringing univer-sity autonomy. In principle, however, the fundingmechanism could be adjusted to include some elementlinked to student destinations. There is already an ele-ment based on the number of students admitted: thiscould be extended to cover the number of students whograduate, and/or the number who secure jobs, andindeed could 'leapfrog' to the latter if necessary. Butadmissions numbers are easy to define and to count.Monitoring of proportions getting jobs is more com-plex and more problematic. Would the short intervalused for the current first-destination data (the end ofthe current year in which graduation took place) beregarded as adequate if funding depended on it? Howwould 'getting jobs' be defined: any kind of job? onlygraduate-level jobs? if so, what constitutes a graduate-level job? what about further study? Also, as we haveseen (para 4.9), too much emphasis on such data mightnot always be supportive of good practice in careersservices.

E-5413=-1 If a direct link to funding mechanisms isimpracticable or inappropriate, a further approach mightbe through exhortation based on a staffing formula ofsome kind. These have been suggested in the past:

(a) The Heyworth Report, as already noted (para 2.7),recommended that the aim should be a staff:stu-dent ratio of 1 appointments officer (e.g. careersadviser) for every 100 final-year students 'availablefor employment'.

(b) In 1987, an AGCAS policy document on resourceneeds in careers advisory services in polytechnicsrecommended that there should be one careersadviser for every 1,000 full-time and sandwich stu-dents (equivalent to one careers adviser for 400final-year students), plus one member of supportstaff for each careers adviser (with a minimum oftwo support staff in a service with only one careers

5

23

adviser). This was based on a careful analysis ofutilisation of staff time, including some groupwork, employer liaison, training, and other activi-ties; it allowed for providing one-hour interviewsto seven in every eight students, and giving theman average of 1.2 interviews each.

10.13 VU The 1994 AGCAS Resources Survey indicateda range from 1,000 to 7,251 full-time students percareers adviser. The distribution of UK institutions pro-viding data was as follows:

No. of fiiii-time students per No. of institutionscareers adviser

0 1,000 1

1,001 1,500 9

1,501 2,000 292,001 2,500 242,501 3,000 183,001 4,000 15

4,001 5,000 4

5,001 6,000 2

6,001 + 1

103

(NB these figures excluded part-time students, and med-icine, dentistry and veterinary science students).

Thus only one institution met even the 1987 polytech-nic recommendation, let alone the Heyworth formula,even though the range of client-groups and functionscarried out by careers services has expanded consider-ably since these ratios were calculated. The staff:studentratio tends, paradoxically, to be significantly lower atinstitutions whose students are already better equippedto get jobs in blue-chip and other high-status organisa-tions (see also paras 2.17-2.18): the relative under-resourcing of careers services elsewhere accordinglyreinforces, rather than compensating for, the disadvan-tage of their students (see para 9.9).

ILIA LW Estimates along the lines of those cited inpara 5.13 could provide a useful external benchmark forinstitutions and their services. In view of the diversityof current and likely future provision, it might be use-

. ful to calculate estimates for a range of models, incor-porating some of the variables that will be outlined inSections 6-8. There has been concern in some careersservices that estimates of this kind could lead to 'level-ling down to the lowest common denominator'.Without some such benchmarks, however, it is difficultto demonstrate the implications of different fundinglevels.

EVICI lU A further approach used in the past has beento publish universities' expenditure on careers servicesper full-time-equivalent student. The most recent data,which did not include the ex-polytechnics, indicated a


Etrizatumittragezug,:, t ; Amain

range (excluding the independent business schools)from £43 to £16 (CVCP/UFC, 1994). Such data at leastprovide a basis for probing the reasons for the differ-ences, though they too could be viewed as being opento the charge of 'levelling down'. They are no longerpublished: expenditure on careers services is now partof a much wider 'staff and student facilities' category(which also includes student offices in registries, hous-ing offices, hall wardens, and chaplaincies).

ELICI va An alternative approach, adopted by somecareers services (e.g. Nottingham), has been to draw upstatements of entitlement based on their currentresource levels. This has the benefit of providing aninternal benchmark against which the implications ofany increases or decreases in funding and staffing canbe demonstrated.

lila CO A final approach is to adopt the concept of anationally applicable student entitlement. The Charterfor Higher Education published by the then Depart-ment for Education in 1993 stated that 'you shouldreceive well-informed guidance from your tutors andcareers staff and appropriate access to counsellors'. Thisentitlement could be spelt out in more detail, andlinked to a requirement for institutions in receipt ofpublic funds to publish information in their prospec-tuses on the nature and extent of their careers serviceand associated activities, as well as on the first destina-tions of graduates from each of its courses. There couldalso be a right of redress for students, possibly throughan ombudsman or conciliation service, if this entitle-ment was not delivered.

1:549:1 In reviewing these various approaches, atten-tion should also be given to the need for stronger com-parative data on the resourcing and operations of

ao

careers services. AGCAS has attempted to collect suchdata on a voluntary basis, but has experienced great dif-ficulty in securing data that are consistent and compre-hensive. If careers services in higher education are to beaccountable not just within their institutions but in anational policy context, such data are essential.

Strategic issuesKriel I Strategic issues for government in relation tothe national policy context accordingly include:

(a) Is current provision for careers guidance in highereducation sufficient to yield the economic benefitsfrom its investment in higher education?

(b) If not, what would adequate provision comprise,and how might it be secured?

(c) Should there be a lifelong careers guidance servicebased outside higher education institutions?

(d) What should be the relationship between such aservice and careers services based inside highereducation institutions?

(e) Should policy levers be used to secure a minimumstandard of careers guidance provision within insti-tutions?

(0

(g)

If so, which policy levers should be adopted?

What comparative data need to be collected acrossinstitutions to monitor the effectiveness of suchlevers?

Careers services and their institutions need to takeaccount of possible government reponses to theseissues. They also need to bear in mind the possiblenational policy implications of their own actions.


Lb+ !

IntroductionMg 913 III

SECTION 6

ADAPTING THE CORE

At an institutional level, strategic directionsfor careers services need to be reviewed in the light ofthe changes outlined in Section 3. We will start byreviewing the core activities of careers services as cur-rently constituted, the relationships between theseactivities, and their viability for the future. This willprovide a basepoint for reviewing more radical strategicoptions in Sections 7 and 8.

The traditional coreThe traditional core role of careers services is

boundary management: helping students to managethe choices and transitions they need to make on exitfrom their course in order to proceed effectively to thenext stage of their career.

.11EK As noted in para 2.6, the Heyworth Reportdefined the core activities as comprising (i) interviews,(ii) information, and (iii) placement. Arguably these.still provide the core. The AGCAS criteria for institu-tional membership require that the careers serviceshould be 'constituted, resourced and empowered to co-ordinate the institution's degree level careers activitiescentrally' and should (my italics):

(a) 'Provide educational, vocational and careers guid-ance.'

(b) 'Maintain an information system, on open access tomembers of its institution.'

(c) 'Establish and maintain contact with potential andexisting employers of the institution's graduates andwith relevant professional bodies.'

In practice, all careers services now offer guidance notonly through individual interviews but also throughgroup sessions. The links with employers extendbeyond placement. The Heyworth triad can thereforebe redefined as comprising (i) individual and groupguidance, (ii) information, and (iii) employer liaisonand placement. Around these can be built a variety ofother activities: the only one mentioned in the AGCAScriteria is professional responsibility for the collection,quality and interpretation of graduates' first-destinationstatistics.

There are however pressures on each aspectof the core, which are changing its nature and posingquestions about its future form.

Individual and group guidanceE:tic5:=1 Individual guidance is particularly cost-inten-sive. Activities here include:

(a) Long interviews (usually between 30 minutes andan hour), sometimes covering individual test ses-sions and mock selection interviews as well as con-ventional guidance interviews.

(b) Short 'duty adviser' interviews (usually 5-15 min-utes), designed partly to respond to 'quick queries'and partly to diagnose students' guidance needsand signpost them to resources through whichthese needs might be met.

In addition, extensive use is now made of computer-aided careers guidance systems (see para 2.14). The shiftof balance from (a) to (b) has already been noted (paras2.13-2.18), and has gone much further in some seivicesthan in others. In some, there are still as many longinterviews as short sessions; in others, particularlywhere a short diagnostic interview is required beforeaccess to a long interview is granted, the ratio hasshifted to 1:4. There are even cases where the longinterview is now barely advertised, and offered only inexceptional circumstances.

=616==1 The shift of balance away from long inter-views is viewed by some careers advisers and employersas a serious and regrettable erosion of the quality of theservice provided to students; by others as a welcomemove towards a more student-driven approach to careermanagement, which is more in tune with the concept ofstudent self-reliance. Students seem to welcome theimmediacy of response which the duty adviser systempermits. Services are able to see more students, and toreduce waiting lists for the long interviews. On the otherhand, some careers advisers are concerned that the shortsessions may be regarded by too many students as a sub-stitute for long interviews, and for the opportunities fordeeper and more probing reflection which such inter-views can offer. Such advisers argue that ready access toa long interview at least once during a student's courseought to be an essential part of core service provision.Some further argue that it should include access to psy-chometric testing, including aptitude testing and per-sonality analysis (offered only to a limited extent, if atall, in most services at present).

E617=1 The diversity both of resources and of philo-sophical approach means that there is growing diversityof practice in the scale and nature of the individual

31


guidance that is provided. The 'entitlement' which isoffered to students is likely to take very different formsin different institutions.

1_61.8.__J Group guidance programmes, too, are designedin part to achieve greater cost-effectiveness in the use ofcareers service resources. Activities here include:

(a) Developing careers education materials (self-instructional and/or for use in group work).

(b) Organising and/or running group sessions, rangingfrom general talks on graduate opportunities,through sessions designed to help students identifytheir transferable skills, to skills training on self-presentation in interviews and on applicationforms.

Extensions of such programmes in the form of accred-ited courses and/or working through teaching depart-ments move beyond the core and will be consideredlater.

InformationInformation activities include:

(a) Collecting, displaying and disseminating informa-tion resources on careers, employers, the labourmarket, self-employment, courses and funding.

Developing additional information resources forcustomised use within the institution.

(b)

(c) Contributing to the development of AGCAS/CSUinformation resources to be made available to allcareers services.

(d) Responding to information enquiries (in the careerscentre, by telephone, by e-mail, etc.).

(e) Collecting, disseminating and interpreting informa-tion on the first destinations of graduates.

.1211111M An important issue here is the balancebetween (b) and (c): between customised and nationalinformation resources. In principle, there is furtherscope for pooling of information resources, and for thedevelopment of high-quality resources at a nationallevel, so reducing duplication. On the other hand, thegrowing diversity of higher education, the tendency formore students to seek jobs in local labour markets, andthe competition between higher education institutions,all push in the opposite direction.

Mall A further important issue is the impact ofinformation technology on the way in which informa-tion is made available. This will be considered in moredetail later (Section 10).

32

6

Employer liaison and placementNAN INA The employer liaison and placement activi-ties include:

(a) Organising selection interviews on-campus (the`milk-round').

(b) Arranging employer presentations.

(c) Organising careers fairs.

(d) Collecting, displaying and disseminating vacancyinformation.

III1311K The 'milk-round' has been in decline for sev-eral years, and in some institutions has disappearedaltogether (in some it never existed). This is due to anumber of factors:

(a) More large employers now recruit on a year-roundbasis to particular vacancies, rather than at a singlepoint in time into a central graduate trainingscheme.

(b) More large employers now target particular institu-tions and even particular departments, and do notcast their net as widely as they did previously.

(c) More graduate employment is now in small andmedium-sized enterprises (see para 3.8), which areunlikely to engage in `milk-round'-type recruit-ment.

(d) The pressures of regular assessment stemming frommodularisation and semesterisation have meant insome institutions that where 'milk-round' visitshave continued, fewer students have responded tothem.

The 'milk-round' still survives, particularly in some ofthe larger and older universities, but even here its roleis more limited than it used to be. At Oxford, for exam-ple, which has one of the largest 'milk-rounds', thenumber of employers involved has declined from 259in 1986 to 75 in 1996. Two other institutions offeringtime-series data have recorded declines from 158 to111, and from 134 to 18, over the last six years.

E6.4* Many larger employers, however, continue togive presentations to groups on-campus and to takepart in careers fairs. The number of such fairs hasgrown: some are organised by individual careers ser-vices; some by regional consortia of services; some inconjunction with commercial partners. Some fairs aredesigned for current students: these tend to be con-cerned with publicising opportunities in a general way.Others are designed mainly for graduates: these tend tobe more oriented towards direct recruitment.

L64s1 The nature of employer liaison is also beingaffected by changes of structures within companies.The effect of downsizing and delayering (para 3.3) has


in some companies been a reduction in the level ofexperience and seniority of those responsible for gradu-ate recruitment. Some companies are also beginning to'outsource' at least the initial stages of the recruitmentprocess to agencies. This erosion of professional struc-tures on the employers' side makes the task of employerliaison more difficult for careers services, and moretime-consuming to manage.

Cid& On vacancy distribution, careers services dis-tribute information on vacancies notified direct tothem, plus information on vacancies publicised nation-ally through CSU. These represent a weak form of place-ment: students are free to apply where they wish, andcareers services only seek to influence the processthrough the general guidance they give to students. Astronger form of placement would require offering amore specific pre-selection filtering process. At the timeof the Heyworth Report, some university appointmentsboards provided such a process (UGC, 1964, p.53).Nowadays, however, careers services in general do notseek to do so, partly because of the logistics of studentnumbers, but mainly because they more clearly definetheir primary client as the student rather than theemployer. Their primary concern is to offer impartialhelp to all their students, rather than to help employersto target the 'best' students.

C647:1 The lack of a pre-selection role explains whyemployers are sometimes reported as being disap-pointed by the service offered to them by careers ser-vices. A Kadence (UK) survey, for example, found thatnearly two-thirds of the personnel managers who hadused careers services rated them as poor (Guardian,24/10/96). Arguably, this represents a misunderstand-ing of the role of careers services, evaluating their per-formance in relation to a service they do not purport tooffer. Nonetheless, it leads to employers adopting alter-native strategies, including:

(a) Building links with teaching departments (particu-larly in vocational or semi-vocational subjects),which are sometimes more prepared to adopt aninformal pre-selection role.

(b) Using student placements as a filtering process.

(c) Using recruitment agencies to target and sift stu-dents.

All of these can circumvent the traditional placementrole of careers services.

EdEI:83 Such circumvention is particularly likely inthe case of small and medium-sized organisations(SMEs). A focus group of people working with suchorganisations indicated that they tend to recruit atskilled and professional levels either through recruit-ment agencies, where they pay substantial fees, orthrough personal networks. They are inclined to be sus-

6

picious of free services as not sufficiently responsive totheir needs, in terms of pre-selection and immediacy.Contacting teaching departments could seem moreattractive, as an extension of the networking approachwhich is more familiar to them. If SMEs use a service,they prefer to be the customer, where they can 'makethe service jump': they are prepared to pay for this.

1:6EI:93 These lines of thinking lead to three radicaloptions in relation to the placement operation, all men-tioned in the course of the project interviews:

(a) Restructuring it as a separate service, paid for byemployers, and set up to pay primary attention toemployers' needs.

Outsourcing it by offering facilities for one or morerecruitment agencies to operate on-campus.

(c) Viewing it as a more proactive brokerage role, seek-ing to market the institution's 'product' (its gradu-ates) and to enable employers to find the recruitsthey need.

Some independent business schools have adoptedoption (c); it is, however, very labour-intensive andthere must be doubts, even if it were considered desir-able, about how effectively it could be adapted to themassive numbers of students in higher education as awhole. The other two options seem more immediatelyfeasible, but raise issues about the risks of movingtowards a less student-centred approach, and of sepa-rating placement from guidance.

len: The relationship between guidance and place-ment is complex. The argument for combining them ina single service is that they are complementary activi-ties, and that their combination ensures that the guid-ance offered is kept in close touch with the needs ofemployers and the realities of the labour market. Thereare however limitations in this respect, because careersservices' placement activities have always been muchstronger in some sectors of the graduate labour marketthan in others. In effect, therefore, the integration ofguidance and placement is confined to these sectors.This explains the common complaint, voiced in the pro-ject's student focus groups but also in other studies (e.g.Harvey et al., 1997, pp.105-106), that careers servicesare viewed as being much more 'geared up' on opportu-nities in the corporate sector than in areas like themedia, the arts, and voluntary organisations andindeed in SMEs more generally where students receivegeneral guidance support from careers services but com-monly have to seek out placements for themselves.

:61212 This issue takes different forms in differentinstitutions, because of the growing practice by largeremployers of targeting a small number of institutions(Connor et al., 1996). In institutions which are stronglytargeted by companies with extensive resources to

(b)


promote their opportunities, the danger is distortion. Ininstitutions which are not targeted in this way, the dan-ger is starvation: that the services feel increasingly 'outin the cold', deprived of the contacts with employerswhich keep them in touch with the labour market.

C642: In response to these problems, a number ofcareers services have taken proactive steps to build uptheir knowledge of, and links with, SMEs. This is noteasy, because it is resource-intensive work, and careersservices' ways of operating have been much moreattuned to the large-company culture. Some have devel-oped databases of local SMEs, sometimes on a consor-tium basis with other institutions, and/or with bodieslike the local TEC/LEC. Some, too, have becomeinvolved in national or local projects designed to pro-vide structured work placements in SMEs: this again,however, begins to move beyond the core (see para 8.7).The future of the placement role in relation to SMEs ispart of the wider issue of finding new ways of main-taining labour market information across the full rangeof the graduate labour market, keeping careers servicesin touch with the ways in which it is changing. Thefirst-destinations data (see para 4.25) are a valuablesource in this respect.

Supplementary activitiesE643: Around the core activities, a wide range ofsupplementary activities has been developed. These fallinto three broad categories:

(a) Additional services offered to students.

(b) Making the core activities available to other clientgroups.

(c) Playing a broader brokerage role between the insti-tution and employers.

The range of such activities, and the level of resourcesinvested in them, vary considerably between careersservices.

DfierC The additional services offered to students(directly or indirectly) can include:

(a) Involvement in information and guidance activi-ties pre-entry (with sixth-formers etc.), and withstudents who are considering module choices orchanges of course.

(b) Arranging course-related placements, and/or place-ments into part-time and vacation jobs.

(c) Teaching accredited career-planning courses, and/or supporting teaching departments in incorporat-ing careers education elements within their courses.

(d) Provision of inter-disciplinary programmes ofcareer insight courses, work shadowing and men-toring schemes.

6

3 4

The extent of such work tends however to be con-strained by resources and, in the case of (a) (c) in par-ticular, by the existence of other activities within theinstitution in the form of central units and/or atdepartmental level in these areas. If careers servicesdevelop significantly in one or more of these directions,this is likely to have significant implications for theirshape and nature. Such possibilities will be explored inSection 7.

:612321able to a number of additional client-groups. These caninclude:

The core activities have also been made avail-

(a) Alumni of the service's own institution.

(b) Graduates of any higher education institution for alimited period post-graduation, through theAGCAS 'mutual aid' scheme (see para 8.6).

(c) Unemployed graduates in the local community,perhaps through a TEC/LEC-funded adult guidanceprogramme.

(d) Research-contract staff within the institution,linked to the Concordat on their career develop-ment (see para 7.33a).

Again, there are resource constraints, and in some casescompetitive constraints, on the extent of such activi-ties. As limited supplementary activities, they may befeasible within current structures. But significant scal-ing-up in any of these areas is likely to have majorstructural implications. Scaling-up of (d) will beexplored towards the end of Section 7; scaling-up of(a)(c) in Section 8.

I:646: So far, careers services have been viewed hereessentially as services offered to individuals. They can,however, be viewed as an organisational brokerage opera-tion: a student-centred janus-like interface between theinstitution and employers which is at once broader andlooser than the potential brokerage role outlined inpara 6.19c. In this view, the service operates primarilyfor students, but also offers an important two-way com-munication channel between the institution and thelabour market:

(a) For the institution, providing information on thelabour market to assist in academic planning. Thismay include representation on academic boards,course advisory groups, and the like. The data onfirst destinations of graduates are particularly help-ful in this respect (some services publish a reportwhich itemises destinations of graduates from eachcourse, student by student). More broadly, no otherpart of the institution is likely to have the rangeof employer contacts that the careers service has.The role may be confined to information feedback,or may be a more extended engagement in courseplanning to improve students' employability:


substantial moves in the latter direction may againhave structural implications (see paras 4.21 and7.24-7.31).

(b) For employers, providing a 'one-stop shop' whichwill point them to places in the institution wheretheir needs can be met. This is valued becauseemployers can only manage a finite number ofongoing relationships. It may involve an elementof informal consultancy: for example, testing outideas for possible new recruitment strategies. Itmay also extend beyond recruitment to facilitatingother links in teaching or research, for example.

The extent to which services are viewed in these terms,and their responsiveness to such expectations, variesconsiderably. The essence of the role is that it retainsa balance between 'looking out' and 'looking in': theservice's authority within its institution stems signifi-cantly from its links with employers; its authority withemployers stems significantly from its contacts withstudents and its links with, and intimate knowledge of,the institution. Strengthening the links on both sides ofthe boundary is, therefore, mutually beneficial, butneeds to be carefully balanced. If the balance is upset,the boundary position is eroded, and the authorityweakened.

Will the core hold?1:612:711 Many careers services and stakeholdersbelieve that the synergy between the three elements ofthe core is critical: that each is complementary to theothers, and that the essence of any viable future strat-egy is to maintain the relationships and balancebetween them. The triad is seen as a three-legged stool:if any of the legs is removed or seriously attenuated, thestool will fall. The balance is not always, however, easyto achieve. When asked what the 'irreducible core' ofcareers services provision would comprise, managers ofcareers services answered in different ways. Some sawinformation as the core, with placement and guidancebuilt around it. Some saw 'duty adviser' sessions as the

core, helping students to access the range of otherresources. Some saw the long interview as the core, withother activities working off it ('we forsake it at ourperil'). Some saw group sessions and information deliv-ered electronically as providing the future core. Allthese tilt the core in different directions, and suggestthat it may be difficult to maintain in a consistent andstable state.

E4E28:1 A few institutions have taken the view that aclearer separation of the functions, perhaps withindistinctive units under the same managerial 'roof',would reduce the tensions between them and enableeach to play to its strengths. For example, Plymouth isconsidering the promotion of its careers service as anAssessment and Diagnostic Centre, and setting up a sep-arate Placement and Recruitment Service, which mayoffer pre-selection, testing for employers, and presenta-tions of relevant CVs on disk/database for employers'use (Phoenix, September 1996). Some other services arethinking of other forms of splitting the c6re, in order toensure its survival and growth, or of moving away fromit into a more radical restructuring. The latter possibili-ties will be explored in the next section.

Strategic issuesi'UIVO: Strategic issues relating to the core accord-

ingly include:

(a) What is the balance to be between (i) individualand group guidance, (ii) information, and (iii)employer liaison and placement?

(b) Are current employer liaison and placement activi-ties, supported by the first-destinations data, suffi-cient sources of labour market information, and ifnot, how are these sources to be boosted and/orsupplemented?

(c) Should the core activities continue to be integratedin a single service, or be given a greater degree oforganisational separation?

STRAT'EGIC DIRECTIONS FOR CAREERS SERVICES IN HIGHER EDUCATION

SECTION 7

BROADER STRATEGIC OPTIONS:I. WITHIN INSTITUTIONS

IntroductionThere are compelling reasons for careers ser-

vices to confine themselves to the core activities outlinedin Section 6. The perceptions and expectations of careersservices held by students, academic staff and employerstend to refer to these core activities. Diversification ofactivities can mean spreading resources too thinly. Astwo services commented in their evidence to thisinquiry:

'We should not be tempted into offering "all thingsto all men". Staffing levels would become evenmore overstretched, delivering core services couldbe compromised and this may lead to calls fordeinstitutionalising careers services. It is naive tothink we would be granted sufficient staff in futureto cater for all requirements.'

'For too long we have tried to be "all things to allpeople", which has resulted in a continual widen-ing of our work and a further stretching of alreadyscant resources. We must look to re-establishing thecore areas of our work.'

MI EDAM At the same time, however, there is a risk thatadhering to a core built around students' exit from theircourses will be increasingly outflanked. The shifttowards a more flexible and student-driven system ofhigher education in which employability concerns aremore pervasive is likely to mean that services focusedexclusively on the exit point will have a more limitedrole to play. If this shift continues and accelerates,careers services based narrowly on this model couldfind themselves marginalised.

EX IN In principle, many of the current changesgreatly extend the scope for utilising the experienceand expertise of careers services. But some may need tofind new forms to take advantage of these opportuni-ties. Unless they do so, the danger is that they fall intosome or all of the number of traps:

(a) Becoming preoccupied with 'firefighting' activity,responding reactively to external pressures.

(b) Attempting to move in too many directions at once.

(c) Feeling guilty that they are missing opportunities.

(d) Feeling increasingly stretched, and anxious thatthe quality of the core is not being maintained.

(e) Feeling resentful of incursions of others on to whatthey feel should be their territory.

3 t;

(f) Becoming preoccupied with survival ('defendingthe right to exist') rather than identifying a senseof purpose (looking for growth').

All of these traps can make it difficult to find space forthe strategic thinking and management of changewhich alone can make it possible to avoid or escapefrom them.

LP The issue is more acute in some institutionsthan in others. Paradoxically, the institutions in whichthere is greater scope for careers services to play broaderand more diverse roles tend also to be the institutionsin which they are least well resourced to take advantageof these possibilities. At universities like Cambridge andOxford, the scope for linking employability concerns tothe curriculum is very limited: a strong but boundedcareers service becomes a means of addressing suchconcerns but also containing them. At the newer uni-versities, on the other hand, the boundaries around thecareers service may be much more permeable, but itslevel of resource tends to be lower, and its functionsmore open to competing claims from other parts of theinstitution. It accordingly has greater opportunities, butis also subject to greater threats. The model offered bythe more traditional universities may be an exemplarfor such institutions, but may also be a distractionwhich inhibits them from finding a model more appro-priate to their own needs.

LL111111 In broad terms, there are seven major strate-gic directions for careers services which potentiallycould lead towards a major restructuring of such ser-vices. They are not mutually exclusive. All representactivities in which careers services are already engagedto a greater or lesser extent (see paras 6.23-6.25). Allcan, therefore, be built around the core, with beneficialsynergy from and to the core activities. On the otherhand, it may be difficult to scale them up within anintegrated organisational structure (see paras7.35-7.37). Indeed, all are areas where there may beexisting alternative roles and structures in place. Theyrepresent strategic directions for careers services; theyalso represent functions which institutions may preferto carry out in other ways, or (in some cases) not toengage in at all.

Mil OM Of the seven options, four represent strongerembedding within the higher education institution:

(a) The integrated guidance model.


(b) The integrated placement model.

(c) The curriculum model.

(d) The learning organisation model.

The other three represent different models for deliver-ing careers services post-graduation:

(e)

(0

(g)

The extended-support model.

The lifelong guidance model.

The alumni model.

In this section, the four 'within-institution' models willbe discussed in turn, drawing on examples of existingpractice but examining their broader potential andimplications. The three post-graduation models willthen be examined in Section 8.

The integrated guidance model11 7i7 : In the integrated guidance model, the careersservice becomes an integral part of a continuous guid-ance process covering educational as well as vocationalchoices, and available to students pre-entry, on entry,and throughout the student's course, as well as on exitfrom it. It is the model adopted in further education bythe Further Education Funding Council in its funding,audit and inspection procedures (Hawthorn, 1996); inhigher education it has been particularly encouragedby the Higher Education Quality Council (1995b) in itsquality-assurance guidelines on guidance and learnersupport. The process is designed to help students to con-struct learning programmes which are related to theircareer aspirations as well as being intellectually coher-ent, and then to move on to the next stage of learningand/or work related to achieving those aspirations.

C1E1= The model is linked to the shift towards amore flexible and student-driven higher education sys-tem, in which individuals are able to move more easilyin and out of, and across different parts of, the system.In particular, it is related to the move towards modularstructures and towards credit accumulation and transfersystems (see paras 3.15-3.17). Without adequate guid-ance support, such systems and structures are likely tolead to incoherent learning programmes. The coher-ence needs significantly to stem from or at least berelated to the individual purposes for which the learn-ing programme is being used. Effective guidance isneeded to enable students to clarify and reality-testthese purposes, to construct the learning programmethat will best achieve such purposes, and to reviewthem on an ongoing basis.

C7i9=1 In its pure form, such structures are viewedby some as providing the possibility of a managed inter-nal market within an institution, using credit-relatedmodules as units of currency (HEQC, 1994; 1996a). Thisis linked to an external market in which these units can

3 7

7

be traded across institutions. Guidance becomes a mar-ket-maker: a way of making the markets work by ensur-ing that individuals make well-informed choices fromthe full range of provision (Watts, 1995). Such guidanceneeds to be impartial, and not influenced by providerinterests. Guidance services are needed in the commu-nity to service the external market (see para 5.6), butalso within the institution to service the internal mar-ket. These services should be independent of the learn-ing provision, to assure their impartiality. They need tobe well-informed both about the learning provision andabout its relationship to labour-market demand.

WEI ION The model can be extended further if a broadview is taken of student learning experiences, toinclude experiences outside as well as inside the formalcurriculum. Under this view, students should beencouraged at an early stage to identify the skills,knowledge and range of experience they want todevelop for employability and other purposes, and thento identify ways in which these can be acquired. Thismay include not only course provision but also involve-ment in student societies and other student activities,and part-time and vacation work placements. In short,they should be helped to plan their 'student career'.Portfolios and records of achievement can then providerecognition of these experiences and the learning theyhave produced. Students' unions are becoming increas-ingly interested in providing active support for devel-opments of this kind.

II/ El III In practice, however, progress in these vari-ous directions is still limited. Modularisation has beenintroduced in many institutions, but in many casesoffers 'phantom' choice and 'phantom' flexibility(Watson, 1989; HEQC, 1994), with departments ring-fencing what students can choose partly in the inter-ests of intellectual coherence, but partly to protect theirunits of resource. Educational guidance is regarded asthe responsibility of personal tutors, who are usuallybased in the student's host department and thereforecannot readily claim impartiality; also, as noted earlier(para 4.29), the tutor system is in many cases beginningto strain or crumble under the pressure of student num-bers. Where modular structures are more open and pro-gressive in nature mainly in some of the neweruniversities systems of educational guidance andlearner autonomy have begun to be created. On thewhole, however, these systems have been kept separatefrom careers services (HEQC, 1994), partly to avoidbeing tarred by association with what may be seen as anarrow utilitarian emphasis on job relevance: it isfeared that such association would increase academics'resistance to change. Yet this institutional splitting ofeducational guidance and careers guidance reinforcesthe separation of, rather than helping students toexplore the relationship between, their learning andtheir career aspirations. Far from enabling the claimed


benefits of a more student-driven system to beachieved, it inhibits their achievement.

The role of careers services in relation to anintegrated guidance model is therefore still restricted.There is some involvement pre-entry, but mainly thisinvolves giving talks to sixth-forms and access courses,and on open days. Some careers services are involved ininduction programmes for new students. Many will alsosee students, on a referral or self-referral basis, whenthey are concerned about the career implications oftheir course choices; this however is usually a reactiverole, and accordingly limited in scale.

LI ICE There are though a few examples of institu-tions beginning to move towards aligning careers ser-vices more strongly with systems of guidance andlearner support. At Luton, the careers service has beenincorporated into a Department of Quality Assurancewhich also includes the modular credit scheme, andaccess and admissions. At Cheltenham and Gloucester,consideration is being given to relocating the careersservice into a Faculty of Modular Scheme Management,along with the provision for access and for academiccounselling. Such moves represent steps towards a moreintegrated guidance model.

The integrated placement modelIn the integrated placement model, the

careers service's involvement in placement on gradua-tion (see paras 6.12-6.22) becomes part of an inte-grated placement operation which also includescourse-related placements, and placements into part-time and vacation jobs.

E7TA:P The pressure to offer work-based placementsas part of undergraduate courses is growing. The TECNational Council (1997), for example, argues that thereshould be a national requirement for all degree coursesto include a work-based project. Surveys indicate thatemployers increasingly want recruits to be effective and'workplace-ready' from the outset. Work-based learningplacements are overwhelmingly encouraged byemployers as a way of developing such effectivenessand readiness (Harvey and Green, 1994; Harvey et al.,1997). They not only say it is important but alsoactively use it as a recruitment criterion. Students whohave had such placements are more likely to have hada job offer (Purcell and Pitcher, 1996). Indeed, manyemployers use placements as a means of screening stu-dents as potential recruits.

win 1111 Course-related experiences of work can take avariety of forms. These include one-year 'sandwich'placements, short work-experience placements duringterm, vacation placements, work shadowing, and work-based projects. Some are concerned with meeting pro-

7

fessional bodies' requirements for professional practice;some with providing broader opportunities for explor-ing the interaction between theory and practice; somewith simply extending students' experience andenabling them to explore a career area of interest (Wattsand Hawthorn, 1992). In some cases, however, difficul-ties are experienced in securing adequate numbers ofsuch placements: there are concerns about whetheremployers' demands to extend them will be matchedby employers' willingness to provide them.

LI Alongside these course-related placements,most students find their own part-time and vacationjobs, mainly for financial reasons. Student vacation jobsare a well-established feature of the labour market (Ball,1988). But the erosion of student grants (see para 2.13)has meant that the pressure to earn money during one'scourse is now much greater than before. This mayinclude not only vacation jobs but also part-time jobson-campus or in the locality.

ICI 116 The course-related placements tend to bemandated and primarily for learning purposes, whilethe student-initiated placements tend to be voluntaryand primarily for earning purposes. The categories,however, increasingly overlap. Schemes have beenestablished to create vacation jobs which are designedto provide good career development experiences as wellas a source of income: examples include the Shell-spon-sored STEP programme of placements in small andmedium-sized enterprises, and Oxford's Vactrainscheme which is designed to offer career-related oppor-tunities in a variety of professions and locations.Opportunities for part-time jobs can be viewed partly infinancial terms, but some may also be viewed as oppor-tunities for skill development which can be accreditedor 'recognised' in some way. Here they begin to overlapwith other student-development activities carried outon a voluntary basis. On-campus jobs (including jobswithin the careers service itself) can be evaluated withina compensatory model, in which they are required toprovide some mix of quality experience, 'recognition'and pay, with the lack of any one of these being com-pensated by the others.

NM VII Despite these various overlaps, the place-ments tend to be managed within institutions by dif-ferent services. Course-related placements are usuallymanaged by placement tutors within departments orwithin faculties. Efforts have been made in several insti-tutions to provide stronger co-ordination across depart-ments, but even developing databases of employercontacts is difficult: departments tend to protect theircontacts jealously. Co-ordinating mechanisms are oftenquite separate from careers services.

WEIPAIIN In relation to part-time jobs, there has been arapid growth in the 1990s of student employment ser-


vices. An unpublished AGCAS survey in February 1996identified 42 such services: 16 based in student unions,17 in careers services, 4 in personnel departments, 4 inother parts of the institution including student services,and one (at Luton) established as an outpost of theBrook Street Bureau. Locating them in the careers ser-vice can encourage students to visit the service, andmake it easier to provide the full range of vacation andpart-time opportunities in one place. Locating them instudent unions, on the other hand, may make themmore accessible to students. Location need not neces-sarily equate with management: a service locatedwithin a union could be managed wholly or partly bythe careers service and perhaps viewed as a careers-service 'outpost' in broader terms than temporaryemployment.

[141:=1 At present there is considerable fragmenta-tion of these various services. It may be possible to finda careers service focusing mainly on job placement ongraduation, an industrial placement officer attemptingto co-ordinate course-related placements, teachingdepartments managing their own placements outsidethis structure, a student employment service based inthe students union, and a personnel department offer-ing part-time jobs on campus, all co-existing within thesame institution, with no strategic links between them.

4i22:1 Yet in principle the potential for synergy isconsiderable. For example, links with local SMEs tosecure part-time or vacation jobs can be viewed as partof a strategy to encourage them to take on more gradu-ates on a long-term basis. Since all the categories over-lap, bringing them together within an overall strategicframework could maximise the benefits of such overlap,enabling the learning and career-development poten-tial of all placements to be harnessed to the full, andbalanced appropriately with their earning potential.Moreover, many employers would welcome greater co-ordination of the approaches made to them.

14/233 This leads to the notion of a single co-ordi-nated structure, focusing on student placements of allkinds. The careers service might become the structure, inwhich case the placement side of its activities would beconsiderably extended: this is happening in a numberof US universities (Shea, 1995). Alternatively, it mightbe linked with whatever structure is developed.

The curriculum modelC7124: In the curriculum model, the careers servicebecomes part of a delivery vehicle for, or part of a ser-vice designed to support academic departments in,incorporating employability skills and career manage-ment skills into course provision. This model is morecomplex and multi-faceted than the others, and couldtake a variety of different forms.

3 21

liritc: In recent years, there has been a growing con-sensus that greater attention should be given to thegeneric skills that are developed by higher educationalongside the specific knowledge content of courses. Avariety of different names have been used to describethese skills: enterprise skills, personal transferable skills,key skills, core skills, employability skills. Drawing froma variety of such lists, Purcell and Pitcher (1996) dividedthem into three groups: traditional academic skills(research skills, critical analysis, etc.), personal develop-ment skills (independence, self-reliance, etc.), andenterprise skills (interpersonal skills, time-managementskills, etc.). The lists are linked to the concept of 'grad-uateness': the generic attributes that all graduatesshould be expected to possess (HEQC, 1995a). In signif-icant measure, however, they have been derived fromthe stated requirements of employers (e.g. Harvey andGreen, 1994; Harvey et al., 1997).

Eri Alongside the pressure to make such skillsmore explicit has come pressure to define the learningoutcomes more clearly, to give the skills more attentionin course design, and to find ways of assessing the extentto which they have been achieved. Some academicsresist such pressures as additional impositions and dis-tractions; others welcome them as ways of enhancingthe quality and utility of their courses. The emphasis isstrongly on seeking wherever possible to embed theskills in the teaching-and-learning processes of main-stream courses; there may also, however, be some needfor enhancements of, or additions to, such curricularprovision, plus some recognition and (where possible)accreditation of the skill development that is fosteredthrough activities outside the formal curriculum.

WI EDNA In some institutions, careers services havebeen key 'message-bearers' about the importance ofsuch skills in the eyes of employers, and have played asignificant role in debates about how the delivery of theskills should be addressed (Watts and Hawthorn, 1992).Elsewhere, however, there has been a concern not togive the careers service too much prominence in thesedebates, on the grounds that this would enhance acad-emics' resistance to excessive emphasis on the employ-ment voice and would also provide a means ofmarginalising this voice.

MI di:II In addition to their general 'message-bearing'role, careers services have a special interest in a particu-lar group of these skills, now commonly referred to as'career management skills'. These were defined by theAssociation of Graduate Recruiters (1995) as self-relianceskills which enable people to manage the processes ofcareer progression and effective learning: the skills listedcomprise self-awareness, self-promotion, exploring andcreating opportunities, action planning, networking,matching and decision making, negotiation, politicalawareness, coping with uncertainty, development focus,


transfer skills, and self-confidence. Such skills can beviewed in two ways:

(a) As a subset of employability skills.

(b) As a separate set of metaskills which enable peopleto develop and use the full range of their otherskills.

Porrer (1997) has provided a succinct rationale forthem, suggesting that whereas the old formula forcareer success for graduates was a degree, and the newformula is a degree plus transferable skills plus workexperience, the future formula will be these plus careermanagement skills. The reason is the 'careerquake' (seeparas 3.2-3.5).

449: In relation to career management skills,careers services can claim particular expertise. Theyhave for some time run group guidance and careerseducation programmes designed to develop many(though not all) of these skills (see paras 2.11 and 6.8).These have included one-off sessions and free-standingactivities like Insight courses. In some institutions, theyhave developed into major efforts to mount systematicteaching programmes, either as part of the services'own provision or by supporting teaching departmentsin incorporating such programmes into their courses.Such activities have been given significant encourage-ment by the Enterprise in Higher Education programme(Watts and Hawthorn, 1992; Ball and Butcher, 1993),and by the current DfEE-funded Career ManagementSkills Programme. A survey by AGCAS (1995) identified24 institutions offering careers education moduleswithin a unitised/modular degree programme, 48 pro-viding career planning units within courses, and 42 car-rying out consultancy work with academic departmentsto develop careers education within courses, as well asa variety of other kinds of programmes.

f=740: Such activities pose questions about the posi-tioning of careers services within institutions. The morethey get involved in teaching-and-learning activities,the stronger the case for defining them not as a studentservice, but as an academic unit or academic service (seepara 4.21). This is particularly the case if the activitiesare assessed and accredited (the feasibility and desir-ability of assessment and accreditation in the area ofcareer management skills are still matters of debate). Insome cases, e.g. Leeds and Staffordshire, careers serviceshave begun to receive income for the modules theyteach. At Central Lancashire, however, this has notproved possible because of the university policy thatthere should be a clear line between teaching activitiesin faculties and service activities run by service depart-ments: accordingly, a Career Development Unit hasbeen set up within the Business School, with a second-ment from the careers service, to develop stand-alonemodules in career management skills plus franchisedprovision for other departments.

7

4

riritri An alternative option is to integrate thecareers service into a unit concerned with the broader'skills' agenda. Several institutions have set up suchunits, sometimes in the wake of the Enterprise in HigherEducation programme to maintain its momentum, butsometimes without this stimulus. At Liverpool Hope, forexample, the careers service has become part of theDepartment of Personnel and Professional Developmentwhich focuses on all aspects of teaching and learning(Phoenix, June 1996). At Leeds Metropolitan, the careersservice has been incorporated into the Academic Qualityand Development Office. Such moves may in some casesmean that the careers service begins to lose its separateidentity; it may also, however, mean that the potentialfor influencing the curriculum is enhanced.

The learning organisation modelE7i32J In the learning organisation model, thecareers service becomes part of a service designed to fos-ter the career development of all members of the insti-tution: staff as well as students. This is linked to thenotion that an organisation seeking to become moreflexible and dynamic may not be prepared to offer itsstaff long-term security, but instead should supportthem in regularly reviewing their career developmentto maintain their employability and sense of careerdirection (see Herriot and Pemberton, 1995; Hirsh et al.,1995; Kidd, 1996).

II71L3:3:1 While academic culture tends to be resistantto such notions, the decline of academic tenure, andthe growth of short-term contracts for academic andother staff, potentially lead in this direction. There area few 'straws in the wind':

(a) The recent Concordat between the Committee ofVice-Chancellors and Principals, the ResearchCouncils and the Royal Society sets standards forthe career management and conditions of employ-ment for contract researchers. In Scotland, theScottish Higher Education Funding Council hasfunded a Contract Research Staff Initiative whichhas included a contract with the Scottish GraduateCareers Programme (a joint initiative of all thehigher education careers services in Scotland) to runcareer development courses for research staff, a'training the trainers' course, and resource packs forsuch research staff and trainers (Phoenix, March 1996).

(b) In one institution, it was suggested that some of themoney being used in releasing senior staff to earlyretirement could be better invested in a CareerDevelopment Unit which would enable all staff toreview opportunities at any stage of their career.

(c) In another institution, the careers service has beeninvolved in running a short course on 'ManagingYour Future' as a regular feature of the PersonnelOffice's training programme for staff.


(d) Many institutions have introduced appraisal sys-tems which in principle provide opportunities toreview career progress and options.

Nice iv If such activities expand, the relationshipbetween services for staff and for students becomes animportant issue. While they have different bases,because one is linked to an employment contract andthe other to a client/customer relationship, the overlapbetween them is likely to grow: an increasing numberof students have jobs as part-time workers within theinstitution; some are interested in academic careers;and with the growth of mature students, the age differ-entiation between the two groups is becoming moreblurred. Certainly if staff become more attentive to theneed to take systematic responsibility for their owncareer development, they are likely to attach greatervalue to such work with students, particularly if it isbased on similar principles and practices. The integra-tion or at least strong linking of such services couldtherefore bring considerable benefits, even though it atpresent looks more remote than most of the other mod-els being considered here.

Strategic issues(145D The four models outlined above are by nomeans incompatible with one another. There are how-ever tensions between them which mean that, beyonda certain level of provision, they may require somedegree of structural separation. For example, the inte-grated guidance model requires some separation fromthe curriculum, to assure its impartiality in relation toeducational choices; this makes it difficult to combinewith the curriculum model. Again, the integrated guid-ance model may mean some weakening of links withthe labour market (see para 7.11), whereas the inte-grated placement model requires these links to bestrengthened. Finally, all three of these models arefocused on students, whereas the learning organisationmodel focuses more strongly on provision for staff.

(JIM Such separation may take place at a numberof deepening levels:

(a) Separation of functions within services, with differ-ent staff responsible for different activities (e.g. cur-riculum manager, student placement manager).

(b) Structuring these functions as separate units withinthe careers service, perhaps with separate advi-sory/management structures.

7

(c) Structuring the functions as separate units in theirown right, with appropriate links with the careersservice (e.g. involvement in management or advi-sory groups, or bridging roles spanning the unitand the service).

11417:1 Alternatively, as we have seen, one of themodels may become so dominant that the careers ser-vice becomes integrated into a new structure designedto address its needs. Such structures may be hybrids oftwo or more models, but because of the tensionsbetween them are unlikely to represent them in equalmeasure.

EMS: Strategic issues relating to the within-institu-tion models accordingly include:

(a) What is the scope within institutions for providingintegrated guidance support to students prior to,during and on exit from their courses?

What is the scope within institutions for integrat-ing placement work on exit with course-relatedplacements and placements into part-time andvacation jobs?

(c) What is the scope within institutions for incorpo-.rating career management skills into the curricu-lum, either separately or linked to wider concernsfor employability and personal transferable skills?

(d) What is the scope within institutions for fosteringthe career development of staff as well as students?

(e) How far should the careers service aim to be thedelivery vehicle for these various functions, andhow far should it seek to work with separate struc-tures developed to deliver them?

(f) What are the implications of these functions forthe role and position of careers services withininstitutions?

(3)

(g) What are the benefits, disadvantages and resourceimplications of these different models?

(h) In the context of limited resources, which strategicoptions meet the needs of students and the institu-tion, and provide high-quality, cost-effective solu-tions?

41


SECTION 8

BROADER STRATEGIC OPTIONS:POST-GRADUATION

IntroductionMl:CI The four models examined in Section 7 alltend to move away from the boundary-managementrole on which the traditional core of careers serviceactivities has been based (see para 6.2) and to embedcareers services more strongly within institutions. Thedynamics of the three further models to be consideredin this section are different: they move the focus ofattention beyond the boundary into offering continuedsupport post-graduation. The first of these is concernedwith offering extended support for a limited periodpost-graduation; the second with offering support on alifelong basis to graduates of any institution; and thethird with confining the lifelong support to the institu-tion's own alumni.

The extended-support modelElirJ In the extended-support model, the careersservice is designed to support students not only on exitfrom the institution but also in the initial period ofcareer development post-graduation.

C813= This model recognises that many studentsnow take longer to stabilise in an initial career direc-tion. A survey of Sussex graduates, for example, showedthat six months after graduation, almost one in three ofgraduates in employment were in short-term or tempo-rary jobs, but that this tended to be confined to theearly stage of career development: it was uncommonfor graduates to take a series of such jobs for more than12 months. By three years after graduation, 72% werein 'permanent employment', as opposed to 41% at thesix-month stage (Connor and Pollard, 1996). Again, afollow-up study of graduates from Scottish institutionsof higher education found that the proportion ofunemployed graduates declined from 8.7% six monthsafter graduation to 2.0% a little over three years later(Scottish Graduate Careers Partnership, 1996).

M:41714 The period of extended transition is in partrelated to the more diverse nature of the graduatelabour market, and the demand from SMEs in particu-lar for people who already have some work experience.In addition, it seems that more students are now defer-ring serious consideration to job-hunting until afterthey have completed their degree. The more sustainedpressure of assessment stemming from modularisationand sernesterisation has contributed to this (see para6.13d). On the other hand, the pressure of student debt(see para 3.13) means that students need to find sorn

work as quickly as possible in order to start to bring insome income. This has stimulated policy concernsabout the need to ensure that students get support indeveloping their employability during this periodrather than being unemployed or getting marooned inlow-level jobs.

Mb:CLIMB This raises the question of how far it is thecareers service's job to support graduates during the ini-tial post-graduation period. Is it part of the implicit'contract' of higher education institutions with theirstudents that they should at least provide help until thestudents are launched in a career direction (see paras4.6-4.7)? Or is this something that they do out of gen-erosity where the resources are available? This is animportant issue for many institutions: the Sussex fol-low-up survey, for example, found that 40% had usedthe university's careers service since graduating(Connor and Pollard, 1996). Significant attention tograduates may be at the expense of services offered tocurrent students. The 1995/96 annual report of thecareers service at Brighton noted that the offer of an'after-care' service for up to a year after graduation 'wasused by an increasingly large number of graduates and,whilst much valued by them, proved an increasinglyinefficient and uneconomic way for the careers centreto operate'. A number of institutions now charge thedirect costs of vacancy bulletins to those who wantthese mailed to them. London ceases to offer a free ser-vice to London graduates at the end of the calendaryear in which they graduate; thereafter it charges fees toall users. This is the point at which the first-destinationdata are collected: if such data are regarded as the keyperformance indicator (see para 4.9), ending the freeservice at this point makes hard-headed sense. Mostinstitutions, however, make their services available freeof charge to their graduates for an extended period(commonly three years) or even on a lifelong basis (seepara 8.18 below).

WU OM The position is complicated by the fact thatmany graduates move back to their home town or else-where at some distance from their place of study.Accordingly, a 'mutual aid' scheme has been establishedunder which services have agreed to offer what servicesthey can to each other's graduates (and current stu-dents) for three years post-graduation. Current practice,however, varies considerably, from London whichcharges for all services to such users, to others whichoffer a free service to all-corners, the only restrictionbeing that they may not have access to full careers


adviser interviews during busy times. An AGCAS surveyconducted in 1994 suggested that the great majority felltowards the latter end of the spectrum. Nonetheless,the diversity of views on this and the very differentsituations faced by services in densely-populated andthinly-populated areas has made it difficult to pro-mote the 'mutual aid' provision as a standard nation-ally-available service. A limited national baseline hasbeen established by a telephone advisory service(Graduate Career line) funded by AGCAS and run fromtwo sites (Bristol and Strathclyde), which in 1995received over 1,100 calls. The Internet offers furtherpossibilities both for extending this baseline and formaking it easier for students to maintain contact withtheir own institution (see paras 10.3 and 10.6).

C84,1: The diversity of provision is even greaterwhen consideration is given to additional provisionaddressed directly to the needs of recent graduates whohave not yet found a launching-pad for their post-graduation careers. A number of services offer job-search workshops or jobclubs, in some cases funded byTECs/LECs and other bodies. Some of these are run bycareers services on their own; some in partnership withother careers services and/or other organisations.Beyond this, some careers services have also becomeinvolved as partners in longer training and/or work-experience programmes for unemployed graduates,often involving SMEs. These programmes are particu-larly common in parts of the UK Scotland, Wales,North-East England where they are linked to govern-ment and TEC/LEC economic strategies for retainingmore graduates in the region. They can also be linkedmore widely with economic strategies designed tostimulate innovation and development in SMEsthrough more effective utilisation of graduates (seepara 3.9). The TEC National Council (1997) has arguedthat careers services should be more active in suchschemes.

c:8!8TJ In this field, however, careers services are in acompetitive market. A number of other initiatives havedeveloped within the public, private and voluntary sec-tors addressing the guidance, training and placementneeds of recent graduates. Other organisations have ser-vices to offer, including guidance organisations(notably the careers companies set up as a result of thereorganisation of the statutory Careers Service seepara 4.12), employment agenciesf deployers' (which areplaying an increasingly important role in helping grad-uates to find an initial toehold in the labour market),and training organisations (including university busi-ness schools). Key issues for careers services are whetherthey seek to work in partnership or competitive modewith such organisations, and whether they do so aloneor in partnership with other higher education careersservices. Few are in a position to be effective in operat-ing alone in this area. There is however anxiety that

8

relying on other organisations in order to establish astrong presence in the post-graduation market mayencourage these other organisations to offer competi-tive services closer to careers services"core' business.Whether these concerns are best met through co-oper-ative arrangements which define terrain, or by a com-petitive approach, is a matter of fine judgement.

E8!9.: A further important issue is the amount ofeffort careers services are prepared and able to expendin developing the partnerships, getting to know theagendas of potential funding bodies, harnessing sourcesof influence, and learning how to prepare bids. Somehave been successful in playing leading roles and win-ning substantial resources to enhance the support theycan offer to recent graduates; others have been slow inresponding to the possibilities, and have been sidelinedby the initiatives of others.

C8402 The nature of the partnerships formed tocarry forward these activities varies. Some represent anetwork approach in which each of the partners pro-vides an agreed contribution to a joint programme.Others have led an establishment of a separate jointly-managed structure (e.g. Graduate Support, a joint yen-ture of Newcastle and Northumbria, with funding fromthe local TECs, which employs a full-time careersadviser plus administrative staff, and has a programme ofworkshops and training courses as part of a wider part-nership arrangement).

L8' I I I The growth of local and regional partnershipsto strengthen the 'extended support' model presents adilemma for careers services. The 'mutual aid' schemeprovides a framework which could enable careers ser-vices to establish a strong national presence in the post-graduation 'market', fortified by the collaborativeresources of AGCAS and CSU. But the differences ofapproach make it difficult to harmonise this into acoherent service based on common principles. In addi-tion, the local and regional partnerships lead to stillgreater diversity of practice and also to difficult ques-tions about the extent to which the AGCAS and CSUresources can and should be shared with the other bod-ies involved. The way in which these tensions areresolved is likely to have a significant influence on thefuture role and structure of careers services.

The lifelong guidance modelE8d1-] In the lifelong guidance model, the careersservice is part of a lifelong guidance service designed tosupport graduates from any higher education institu-tion in their career development in other words, theirprogression in learning and in work (see para 3.5). Themodel is linked to the recognition that individuals nowincreasingly need to take more responsibility for theirown career development, on an ongoing basis, regularly


reviewing their career progression and employability, sothat their skills do not atrophy. The growth in the num-ber of mature students (see para 3.11) means that manycareers services are already, in principle at least, offeringlifelong guidance: the model seeks to make this servicemore widely available.

n;u1Ke There are at least two different ways in whichcareers services and their institutions might move inthis direction. One is as part of a strategy for position-ing higher education institutions in relation to lifelonglearning. If such institutions want to locate themselvesas the natural point to which individuals come whenseeking career development or redirection, then to offera guidance service on a lifelong basis may seem attrac-tive. This rationale may be broadened if higher educa-tion institutions link with each other and possibly alsowith further education institutions within a regionalstrategy. There may be tensions between those whoview such services as impartial guidance services whichwill probably provide recruitment spin-offs but will doso indirectly, and those who view them as direct recruit-ment devices. Regional agreements linked to clear qual-ity standards may however be able to manage thesetensions. Such agreements are already beginning to bedeveloped in some areas in relation to pre-entry guid-ance: within a lifelong learning system, all guidance ispotentially pre-entry guidance.

C8440 The other approach is to view lifelong guid-ance as an opportunity for the careers service's skills tobe marketed more widely, on an income-generatingbasis. Higher education institutions are increasinglyinterested in finding new markets for resources devel-oped for their core business. The income for such ser-vices might come from individuals themselves, and/orfrom employers (for outplacement or employee-devel-opment work) and/or from government and otherfunding sources.

EtS=1 The main initiative which has stimulatedcareers services to explore this area has been the gov-ernment-funded adult guidance schemes launchedthrough a number of TECs/LECs (see para 5.8). Some ofthese have involved guidance vouchers which individ-uals could redeem at a number of approved agencies(see Watts, 1995). The vouchers were often on a full-cost basis for unemployed or unwaged people, and on apart-cost basis for employed individuals. A number ofhigher education careers services have been involved insuch schemes, and in many cases have been regarded asthe natural port of call for graduates. In some cases thishas enabled them to receive income for services whichthey were already providing free of charge to alumni orunder the mutual-aid scheme. It has also, however,encouraged them to start exploring the possibility ofcharging individuals for services, particularly beyondthe three-year mutual-aid watershed (cf. para 5.6).

8

1VE6=3 This model raises even more strongly some ofthe issues discussed earlier in relation to the 'extendedsupport' model. While the latter can be viewed as a nat-ural extension of the core, the 'lifelong guidance' modelinvolves moving into a wider and more competitivearea, where the rationale for involvement of highereducation careers services, and the adequacy of theirexpertise, are more open to contestation. Again, there-fore, the issue arises of whether careers services shouldseek to forge stronger links with each other and/or withother partners. Successful moves into this field mayrequire a different structure, a different culture, and dif-ferent skills, than those commonly found in individualcareers services at present. Some of these can be foundthrough partnerships. Such partnerships can be veryeffective where trust is maintained; in some cases, how-ever, careers services have felt that they have been usedas stepping-stones for other organisations to establishtheir own presence in this field.

The alumni modelEft Erh Finally, under the alumni model, the careersservice becomes part of a longer-term support and net-working service for its institution's own alumni, as partof the institution's strategy for maintaining alumnilinks. This means moving into the lifelong guidancefield, but on a much narrower basis.

E8E113: A few universities, including but not con-fined to Cambridge and Oxford, have always viewedtheir ex-students as being members for life, and there-fore as being entitled to use the facilities of the univer-sity, including the careers service. In practice, thisfacility has not been widely publicised. As a result, thedemand for it has been limited, and therefore manage-able.

1:849:1 The erosion of public funding for higher edu-cation institutions is however encouraging them tolook for alternative sources of funding, one of which isto move towards the tradition of alumni donationswhich has been an important financial source forhigher education in the USA. This is encouraging moreinstitutions to set up alumni offices, and to look forways of maintaining active contact with alumni. Accessto a careers service would seem to be a facility thatmight be of particular interest in this respect.

IL-4-20: This raises the question of the extent towhich such a service should be marketed on a fee-pay-ing basis to users, or offered as a free service by the insti-tution as a form of investment, or based on sponsorshipeither through the alumni association or from the busi-ness sector. Experience in both the USA and the UK sug-gests that 'in general neither Americans nor British areprepared to pay the commercial costs of adult careercounselling in the same way as they are used to paying

4 4


for their hairdressers, garage mechanics and lawyers':therefore some subsidy would seem necessary if alumnicareers services are to be viable (Snow, 1994, pp.14-15).

111:CIVII A number of initiatives for alumni have beenlaunched. Bristol has run workshops for those aged25-35 who are contemplating career change.Manchester has agreed to an award of £22,000 topump-prime an alumni careers service. Oxford, too, hasbeen looking at ways of offering a more systematicand proactive service to alumni. Such services in theUSA include career seminars, career developmentcourses, career counselling, electronic services throughwebsites, job fairs, and credentials services (Phillips,1996). There are also possibilities for building strongernetworking between alumni, or even offering head-hunting services for employers (formalising the 'oldboy'r old girl' network).

MgC1111A In many cases these possibilities for offeringhelp to alumni are linked to strategies for using alumniin providing help to current students. Many servicesalready invite alumni back to give talks to students andtake part in careers fairs. This can be regarded simply asan information source, but also more broadly as leadingto networking possibilities. A number have set upcareers networks comprising databases of alumni whohave agreed to provide information about careers overthe telephone, in writing, by e-mail or in person to cur-rent students. This can be extended by using alumni forshadowing, work-experience and mentoring schemes.

NI,',C111CU A further dimension is using alumni assources of feedback on course relevance to employ-ment. A number of institutions and departments haveconducted surveys of former students to find out howrelevant their courses have been to their jobs in termsof skills as well as knowledge, and what skills deficitsmight usefully have been addressed within the courseprovision. The surveys sometimes include questionsabout the willingness of alumni to be involved ininitiatives designed to improve the relevance andresponsiveness of teaching and learning, or to help inother ways. Where they have been planned in conjunc-tion with careers services as well as alumni offices,there is scope for useful synergy between the differentagendas.

EgiM The balance between services to and fromalumni needs to be carefully struck, but they can gowell together: involving alumni in offering help to stu-dents and to institutions can be viewed as part of devel-oping the 'warm glow' which maintains their links withtheir institutions. If however the services to alumni areto be a substantial part of the strategy, they require cus-tomised provision designed to address their needs,rather than add-ons utilising existing resourcesdesigned mainly for current students.

8

Strategic issuesThe models examined in this section poten-

tially shift the focus of careers services away from cur-rent students towards graduates. This may be regardedas a natural enhancement of their existing activities. Itmay also, however, be viewed as syphoning offresources which should be fully applied to supplyingservices to students. Beyond a limited level of activity,therefore, these models all require additional resourc-ing. Seeking and managing such resources is a signifi-cant management task.

Worm. For these reasons, some institutions may viewthese models as being outside their remit or concern.Others may choose one of them at the expense of theothers:

(a) An institution which took a narrowly institution-centred view might go for the alumni model, andview 'extended support' as part of this model, giv-ing strong attention to extended support for itsown graduates and only minimal 'mutual aid' sup-port to graduates from other institutions.

Another institution might view extended supportas a natural extension of its core role, but decideagainst the lifelong learning and alumni models onthe grounds that this would require expertisewhich it does not seek to possess.

(c) A further institution might seek to submerge anyattention to extended support and to alumniwithin a range of lifelong guidance services whichare available to all-corners on a costed basis.

(b)

Of the three post-graduation models, thealumni model is the only one which is strongly com-patible with institution-based careers services; the'extended support' and 'lifelong guidance' models tend,as already noted, to pull away from it towards broaderforms of partnership. On the other hand, some institu-tions may take the view that movement towards a muchmore flexible lifelong learning system, with easy move-ment between as well as within institutions, is likely toweaken institutional loyalties and the feasibility ofalumni strategies.

As with the within-institution models (para7.36), some services may create separate units to developactivities in one or more of these areas (e.g. an alumnicareers unit). These units may be linked with, or becomepart of, partnership arrangements. Alternatively, careersservices may collaborate with others in setting up sepa-rate structures to deliver the models in a cohesive way,or form appropriate relationships with such structureswhere they already exist. Unlike the within-institutionmodels, however, it seems unlikely that careers serviceswould become wholly merged into these structures: todo so would be to lose their institutional roots.


III : UP A,' 1 Strategic issues relating to the post-gradua-tion options accordingly include:

(a) What is the scope for extending services to coverrecent graduates both of the host institution and ofother institutions?

(b) What is the scope for careers services to play a rolein making guidance available in the local commu-nity on a lifelong basis?

(c) What is the scope for building lifelong careers ser-vices for alumni?

(d) Which of these activities should the careers serviceengage in?

(e) How are the activities to be resourced?

(0

(g)

Should the careers service aim to deliver such activ-ities alone or in partnership with others?

Which partners should it seek and what are theimplications of such partnerships?

8,

E8130:1 The models outlined in this and the preced-ing section provide seven strategic directions for careersservices. The relationship between these models andthe current core and supplementary activities of careersservices (see Section 6) is outlined diagrammatically inFigure 1. Strongly resourced services may retain a sig-nificant involvement in activities linked to most or allof these models without changing their current shape.In other institutions, however, it seems more likely thatwhat will emerge will be a distributed structure, with avariety of different units each attending to one or moreof the models. Within such a structure, the careers ser-vice might continue to be built around the traditionalcore, with appropriate links with the other units; or itmight significantly change its shape and nature; or itmight become the co-ordinating focus for a range ofdistributed services.

EXTENDED-SUPPORT MODEL

ALUMNIMODEL

LIFELONG GUIDANCE MODEL

Figure 1

4 i3STRATEGIC DIRECTIONS FOR CAREERS SERVICES IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Introduction

SECTION 9

PROFESSIONAL ISSUES

E911J This section will examine three sets of profes-sional issues which cross-cut the strategic options dis-cussed in the preceding sections:

(a) Structures of professional collaboration.

(b) Recruitment and professional development.

(c) Quality assurance.

Structures of professional collaborationL912_1 Structures of professional collaboration aremore strongly developed in careers services than in mostother 'operational' areas of higher education. As notedin para 2.19, such collaboration started with the poolingof data on first destinations of graduates, and developedinto two complementary bodies: the Association ofGraduate Careers Advisory Services (AGCAS), whichincludes all universities and most major colleges ofhigher education (130 institutions and around 800 staff)in the UK and Eire; and the Higher Education CareersServices Unit (CSU), which is an agency of theCommittee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals (CVCP),the Standing Conference of Principals (SCOP), and theConference of Scottish Centrally Funded Colleges(CSCFC).

EV EX MI AGCAS is the professional association forcareers services in higher education, providing leader-ship and support to, and fostering collaborationbetween, its member services. It operates through abiennial conference, a plenary committee of heads ofservices, an executive committee, and over 25 sub-com-mittees and working parties. The latter cover areas ofdevelopment (careers education, IT systems, psychome-tric assessment), operational matters (finance, the asso-ciation's professional journal Phoenix, publications,PROSPECT (HE) liaison, statistics, video production),particular target-groups (disabled graduates, HND stu-dents, international students, older graduates, servicesto graduates), particular occupational sectors (art anddesign, legal profession, teaching profession), relatedactivities (education liaison, student employment ser-vices), professional issues (credentials, performancemanagement, racial equality, sex equality, training anddevelopment), and other matters (European work,vocational courses, wider entry to higher education).AGCAS members work in teams to write and update aseries of over 50 information booklets and the occupa-

tional profiles that form the heart of the PROSPECT(HE) computer-aided guidance system. AGCAS is alsoheavily involved in training and professional develop-ment work (see para 2.23).

114 CSU, based in Manchester, supports the workof higher education careers services in all universitiesand most colleges of higher education in the UK andEire. Its mission is to lead and support the developmentof high-quality careers guidance information andrecruitment advertising in higher education: it fulfilsthis mission in close collaboration with AGCAS.Although universities and colleges subscribe to CSU,over 90% of its revenue is earned from recruitment andpostgraduate-course advertising in its subsidiary pub-lishing company; the success of this business in recentyears has enabled it greatly to expand the range ofproducts and services it provides for careers service. Itsstaff of over 70 publish each year over a million copiesof the AGCAS information booklets, plus otheremployer and postgraduate directories and vacancypublications; they also manage and develop thePROSPECT (HE) computer-aided guidance system and arange of other guidance and administrative software.CSU's rapidly developing web site which includesdatabases on occupations, employers and postgraduatecourses, plus vacancy information and links toemployer, careers-service and other homepages is cur-rently (March 1997) attracting 250,000 'hits' a month.Some of the income from CSU's publishing business isfed back to support AGCAS activities (in 1996 this sumamounted to over £100,000); around £250,000 a year isused to support the information and software used bycareers services.

LX1M Through the activities of AGCAS and CSU, arich range of common resources has been developed ina very cost-effective way: grounded in the day-to-dayexperience of services, but reducing duplication, over-coming the potential limitations of small institution-based services, and making available to all the benefitsof the extensive range of expertise within the widerAGCAS network, supported by the professional exper-tise of CSU. These collaborative mechanisms have alsoprovided an important source of mutual support, plus acapacity for innovation, and a source of influencethrough their access to CVCP in particular (this hasbeen enhanced by the development of closer linksbetween CSU and CVCP through an agency frameworkagreement).


--9161 Many careers advisers have developed astrong sense of identity with AGCAS. The Americansociologist Gouldner (1957/58) distinguished between'locals' who are primarily concerned with institutionalloyalties, and 'cosmopolitans' whose primary referencegroup is their professional colleagues in other organisa-tions. There has been a significant growth of 'cos-mopolitans' within careers services in higher education.This has been supported by some senior managers whoview a professionally active careers service as analagousto a research-active academic department.

'Ma While the structures of professional collabora-tion within AGCAS remain strong, they have been com-ing under some strain, for three main reasons:

(a) The pressure on resources. As the head of one ser-vice commented:

(b)

'When staff in a service are really hard pressed todeliver basic services at any reasonable standardwithin their own institution, a kind of siege men-tality sets in of necessity. Careers services then with-draw support from communal AGCAS activities.'

This is particularly an issue for small services,which in many ways are more dependent on thesupport and resources which AGCAS provides, buthave less capacity to contribute to their develop-ment.

The more competitive culture within higher educa-tion. This means that there is more questioning ofactivities which are not seen as being directed tothe narrow immediate benefit of the service's owninstitution. In one university, for example, a seniormanager calculated the amount of staff time com-mitted to AGCAS activities as comprising theequivalent of a half-time careers adviser post, andthreatened to reduce the staffing by this amounton the grounds that it indicated over-staffing.

(c) The growing diversity between institutions, interms of status, mission, culture and resources. As aresult, the interests of services are tending todiverge, and it is not always easy to find commonground.

E918:: The result is that greater difficulties are beingexperienced in recruiting writers for the informationbooklets, and in securing volunteers to sit on the vari-ous AGCAS committees, sub-committees and workingparties. There are also growing tensions between ser-vices which feel they are making a disproportionatelystrong contribution and services perceived as taking a'free ride'; this can be exacerbated by the smaller ser-vices' resentment and envy of services in larger and bet-ter-resourced institutions. Increased work pressuresmean less time to cultivate and heal collaborative rela-tionships based on mutual understanding.

9

4 8

1=SLIt] These difficulties have the potential to createsome tensions between the interests of CSU and ofAGCAS. The fulfilment of CSU's charitable purpose issignificantly dependent on its commercial success: onlyaround 10% of its income comes from its higher educa-tion institutions' subscriptions. This leaves it open attimes to being regarded by some careers advisers asbeing 'too commercial' in the way it operates. On theother hand, CSU's operations are constrained by theneed to meet the interests of all its members. In partic-ular, it has not been able in the past to respond to theincreasing wish of employers to target particular insti-tutions: although this is now changing, it has left opena large market which its commercial competitors havesuccessfully exploited. The sensitivity of these issues isexacerbated by the fact that employers' targeting ofinstitutions can be viewed as reinforcing status differ-ences between higher education institutions and thesocial-class, racial and age inequalities with which theyare associated (Brown and Scase, 1994). Strong effortshave been made by both AGCAS and CSU to managethese tensions.

CB II Creatively adapting the structures of profes-sional collaboration is critical if the professional qualityof careers services is to be sustained and developed.Such adaptation will be made easier if the culture ofhigher education begins to place more emphasis onpartnership rather than competition. Whatever hap-pens in this respect, the issues outlined above raisethree important questions for AGCAS:

(a) Should there be a tighter specification of whatmember institutions are expected to contribute aspart of their membership of AGCAS?

(b) Should AGCAS adopt a more flexible and diversestructure which permits and encourages clusters ofinstitutions with common interests to cometogether? A number of networks of this kindalready exist, on a regional or other basis. Some arehighly formalised: the strongest is the ScottishGraduate Careers Partnership, the formal structureof which has enabled it to make joint bids for fund-ing to support a wide range of common initiatives;further clusters are moving in the same direction.Other networks are more informal.

(c) If the broad remit covered by careers services insome institutions is now increasingly covered inother institutions by a range of distributed services,should the structure of AGCAS as based upon insti-tutional membership linked to an identifiable sin-gle service be reviewed? Should it adopt a moreoctopus-like form, extending its franchise to awider range of roles, functions and organisationalstructures?

In any consideration of the future of careers services,the value of the AGCAS/CSU relationship should not be


underestimated. Any developments which led to theweakening or dismantling of this relationship wouldbe likely to have a significant and damaging effecton the quality and cost of careers guidance in highereducation.

Recruitment and professionaldevelopmentE9L-ti As outlined in Section 2 (paras 2.23-2.24),the last couple of decades have seen a considerablegrowth of professionalisation within careers services inhigher education. Nonetheless, the extent to whichstaff hold formal qualifications is still very varied. AnAGCAS survey conducted in February 1996, to which38% of its members responded, indicated that 48% ofheads of services and 58% of careers advisers held aDiploma in Careers Guidance. In all, three-quartersheld a postgraduate qualification of some kind: theseincluded academic postgraduate degrees, teaching cer-tificates, and diplomas in personnel management,librarianship, management and counselling. The per-ceived lack of a consistent standard of professionalismremains a source of weakness in outsiders' perceptionsof careers services.

WEI WA With the establishment of the Certificate andDiploma in Careers Guidance in Higher Education(para 2.23), an important issue for the future is whetherguidance qualifications should be the core for all pro-fessional staff, with other skills as add-ons, or whethera range of different professional backgrounds shouldcontinue to be encouraged. Some services are movingtowards the former position, insisting for example thatany new recruits without a professional guidance qual-ification should enrol for the AGCAS/ReadingCertificate. Others take a different view, particularlylarger services which have more capacity for diversifiedstaffing. Services which have moved strongly awayfrom the long individual interview are beginning tolook less for traditional guidance skills than for skills inteaching-and-learning matters, consultancy skills, andIT skills.

g A further important issue is whether there issufficient managerial expertise within careers services atpresent. As the potential range of functions of careersservices grows, without any increase in core resourcing,the effective management of resources becomes moreand more crucial. Skills in forging partnerships and insecuring and managing more varied sources of fundingare critical for development. There is concern that someheads of services view themselves as guidance profes-sionals rather than as managers, and that as profession-alisation in terms of guidance skills has grown, careersservices seem to have found it more difficult to produceleaders who have an impact both within their institu-tion (see para 4.24) and at a national level. Salary scales

are an important factor here. The AGCAS ResourcesSurvey in 1995 showed that the salary levels of heads ofservices in UK institutions were as follows:

£34,001 or more£30,001 34,000£26,001 30,000£22,001 26,000£18,001 22,000£14,001 18,000

18

262219

225

112

1:9E1* The extent to which professionalisation islikely to grow, and the forms it is likely to take, arelinked to the growth of professionalisation in highereducation as a whole. Ironically, higher educationwhich is seeking to expand its role in the field of con-tinuing professional development through the formalqualifications it is able to offer has been tardy andambivalent in applying such processes to its own prac-tices. Academic staff are expected to have research qual-ifications but not teaching qualifications; careersadvisers who have acquired doctorates in academicfields which are at best of marginal relevance to theircurrent roles find it easier than others to command aca-demics' respect. There is however growing pressure tointroduce a system of accreditation for teaching inhigher education, probably on a voluntary basis to startwith, but perhaps moving towards a compulsory systemin the long term. If this happens, it will increase thepressure for greater professionalisation in careers ser-vices.

IVLII LIM Another important issue is career progressionroutes for staff in careers services. The career structurewithin services is limited (though stronger progressionroutes from information officers to careers adviserswould be helpful). There also seem to be few evidentexit routes. Several people consulted in the course ofthis inquiry commented that in their view too manystaff entered careers services and stayed there. Moreattention is arguably needed to developing and accred-iting skills including managerial skills to providemore avenues for career progression out of careers ser-vices, so producing greater voluntary rotation of staff.The move to link the AGCAS/Reading qualifications tothe NVQ framework developed by the Advice,Guidance, Counselling and Psychotherapy Lead Body isa move in this direction, but it needs to be developed alot further. It is ironic that a professional group that isnow concerned so strongly with helping students toidentify their skills and understand the transferabilityof these skills has paid so little attention to doing thisfor itself. There is an important question of 'modelling'here: if careers services are to help students to developthe full range of career management skills outlined inpara 7.28, they need to review how far they are beingseen to practise what they preach.

JSTRATEGIC DIRECTIONS FOR CAREERS SERVICES IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Quality assurancelit& Quality assurance is defined by the HigherEducation Quality Council (1995a) as 'all the arrange-ments and procedures by which an institution dis-charges its corporate responsibility for articulating,maintaining and enhancing the standard of those activ-ities for which it is responsible' (p.3). The institutionalquality-assessment procedures currently being used inhigher education include some attention to careersguidance (see para 5.11). It is questionable, however,whether these provide an adequate means of assuringthe quality of careers services themselves. Institutionsfind it difficult to know how to assess the quality ofwhat their services are delivering. Some senior managersfeel that clear standards and benchmarks are lacking.

101=1 Some services have sought to take the initia-tive in responding to the increased pressures towardsaccountability:

(a) Annual reports are viewed by many services asimportant instruments of accountability (thoughpractice on this is uneven, and some services donot produce such reports).

Many services have sought to extend and formalisetheir internal evaluation procedures. These includeattendance records, periodic feedback surveys ofrecent graduates, evaluation sheets after particularactivities, and use of focus groups to review particu-lar issues or gain feedback on the service as a whole.

(c) Efforts have been made to identify more robustquantitative and qualitative measures of the out-comes of particular activities (see AGCAS, 1991).

(d) Some services have issued codes of practice andstatements of entitlement. London, for example,has published a Clients' Charter which outlines invery specific terms what the careers service offers tostudents and graduates, to employers, and to theuniversity's colleges and institutes, and 'what to doif something goes wrong'.

(e) One service, Strathclyde, has successfully appliedfor a Charter Mark.

(b)

(f) Some services have benefited free of charge fromcommercial benchmarking through taking part instudent surveys funded by employers or in other ways.

A number of services have also been involved in formalquality-assurance procedures established by TECs/LECs,as a result of their involvement in local adult guidanceschemes (see para 8.15). One service commented thatthe procedure had been resented in prospect but valuedin retrospect, as a helpful structuring and formalising ofwhat had previously been informal processes.

a9A:8:i The main responsibility for quality assurancelies with the institution, which has a responsibility forassuring the general quality of the student's experience

5 0

of higher education. Arguably, however, institutionsneed support from organisations like AGCAS to providebenchmarks against which they can review their per-formance. Some conduct periodic performance reviewsin which they invite an assessor from a careers servicein a comparable institution to take part. Beyond this,however, there is a case for AGCAS to develop moredetailed and clearly defined quality standards to sup-plement the minimalist standards it currently requiresfrom institutions in order to qualify for AGCAS mem-bership (see para 6.3). These standards need to acknowl-edge the different models underlying current practicein different institutions (see para 5.15).

E9Tf9:1 Currently detailed work on quality standardsacross all sectors of guidance provision is being carriedout by the National Advisory Council for Careers andEducational Guidance. These are organisational stan-dards for services, and are designed to complement thecompetence standards for individual practitionersalready developed by the Advice, Guidance, Counsellingand Psychotherapy Lead Body (see para 9.15). The stan-dards are being developed from the viewpoint of theuser, and it is recognised that their implementation willneed to be reconciled with whatever arrangements arealready in place for assuring quality from a managerialviewpoint (Hawthorn, 1995). It is likely that one of theways in which the standards will be implemented isthrough an externally-monitored kitemarking proce-dure. AGCAS is a member of NACCEG, and is involvedin this work. The resulting standards may provide a basisfor a more structured approach to quality assurance,harmonised with other sectors of guidance provision,and meeting the criterion suggested by one careers ser-vice in its evidence to this review:

'The challenge to all is to find ways of ensuring pro-fessional development and quality assurance with-out creating further bureaucratic burdens whichdivert resource away from the very services whichare being developed or measured.'

Strategic issues119120:1 Strategic issues identified in this sectionaccordingly include:

(a) How can the structure of AGCAS be adapted to sus-tain and extend the strong structures of profes-sional collaboration that have been developedacross careers services?

(b) How can more effective structures of professionaland career development be developed for staff, tobuild a wider range of expertise, and enable moreflexible movement in and out of careers services?

(c) How can clearer quality standards and benchmark-ing procedures be developed to assure the qualityof careers services?


SECTION I 0

THE IMPACT OFINFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

ELCW The use of information technology in careersservices has been mentioned in earlier parts of thisreport. In particular, reference has been made to thedevelopment of computer-aided guidance systems (para2.14), to the implications of wider access to such sys-tems within institutions (para 4.31), and to the widerange of software developed by CSU (see para 9.4).These resources are already widely used and have hadconsiderable impact on the way in which careers ser-vices operate.

110i21 It is certain, however, that the impact willcontinue to grow and take new forms over the next fewyears. Higher education institutions have investedheavily in information technology. Most institutionshave extensive networking, with access points inlibraries, departments and halls of residence. Their stu-dents represent the largest pool of IT-literate people inthe country, and expect their institutions to be at thecutting-edge of IT implementation. E-mail is increas-ingly being used for internal communications; studentsare also making growing use of the Internet to receive,exchange and disseminate information.

3013:1 In principle, this could make it possible todeliver the main aspects of a careers service's workthrough a 'virtual career centre' available where usersare, rather than requiring them to come to a specificlocation. Most forms of information about occupations,courses, employers, jobs and vacancies could be sup-plied through the Internet. The same could be true ofthe guidance process, with 'quick queries' being con-ducted through e-mail, group guidance through news-groups, and careers education through computer-aideddistance learning; once videophones become morewidespread, the potential for delivering guidance at adistance will become even greater. The placement oper-ation, too, could be conducted significantly throughthe Internet, with electronic pooling of vacancy infor-mation, electronic databases of job applicants whichemployers can search, electronic application forms, andelectronic submission of CVs and resumes.

MUM'S The extent to which all of this will supplantor complement existing services is not yet clear. Manygraduate recruiters have web sites, but are being cau-tious in using the Internet for the recruitment process.Similarly, careers services have been developing websites, but largely so far to promote rather than delivertheir services. There are important issues about security,confidentiality, quality control and access which

remain to be resolved. Some of these especially differ-ential access to the Internet due to lack of sufficienthardware, and to some students' lack of IT literacy areprobably transitional problems; others may be moreenduring.

111171.1M So far as information is concerned, paper-based systems will continue to be needed alongside IT-based systems for at least a few years. There are signs ofsome substitution: some services, for example, are ceas-ing to stock bulky prospectuses of US colleges on thegrounds that these are now available on the Internet,and others are thinking of phasing out the internal cir-culation of vacancy bulletins on similar grounds. Buthow far this process will extend, and at what speed, isstill unclear. This poses difficulties, particularly for ser-vices with information resources that need improve-ment, in deciding how to allocate resources betweenupgrading the paper-based resources and introducingIT-based systems.

1111121.1 More generally, it is unlikely that virtualcareers centres will provide a substitute for physicalcareers centres. Certainly they will make it possible todeliver improved services for users who find it difficultto gain access to the physical centres. This could over-come some of the problems currently experienced bymulti-site institutions in providing an adequate mini-mum quality of service. It could also make it much eas-ier for students to maintain contact with their owninstitution's careers service post-graduation: this couldreduce the need for the current 'mutual aid' arrange-ments between institutions (para 8.6). But there is nosign of any reduction in student demand for the directhuman contact provided by a physical centre. It is thishuman contact which makes the information 'warm',helps students to navigate the resources effectively, andmakes it possible to respond flexibly to the complexityof individuals' needs. Also, the physical act of the visitto a dedicated location implies and supports a level oftask commitment which encourages students to focusintensively on issues that may easily be given cursory. .attention in the normal course of their student lives.

11111111:VM Indeed, it can plausibly be argued that in thetechno-university, the main staff functions are likely tobe more concerned with guidance than with instruc-tion. There is likely to be a switch to more resource-based learning, with students learning from a computerterminal rather than by attending lectures. The role ofthe lecturer will move from being 'a sage on the stage'


to becoming 'a guide on the side' (Lewis and Merton,1996). Students will be able to access high-qualityinstructional material from all parts of the globe. Thekey issues will be selecting the appropriate material andsupporting the process of relating it to the individual'sneeds and goals: essentially guidance issues. This couldsupport stronger moves towards the devolution modeloutlined in paras 4.27-4.33.

4018: The relationship of IT to careers services canbe viewed in three ways (Watts, 1996b). It can be seenas a tool, extending the range of resources available; asan alternative, replacing other elements of the service;or as an agent of change, providing an opportunity toreview the basic design of the service as a whole. Themore it is viewed in the latter terms, the more its poten-tial is likely to be realised. The relationship between ITdevelopment and service development should be seenas a process of 'joint optimisation' (Trist, 1981), inwhich technical possibilities are regularly reviewed inthe light of service needs, and service structures are reg-ularly reviewed in the light of technical developments.

10

INIIIEL Certainly it is essential for careers services toharness IT to the full. It can improve significantly theextent and quality of services, and the ease with whichthey can be accessed; it can also release resources fortasks that require human sensitivity. Students willincreasingly expect high quality of IT delivery, and willnot be impressed by `low-tech' services. At present,exploiting the advantages of IT is being inhibited inmany services by time and resource constraints: it isoften viewed as a subsidiary task to be addressed whentime is available. There is a need for services to developa stronger strategy for IT, linked to their institutions'overall strategy, so that they drive the agenda.

011E11 Strategic issues relating to the use of ITaccordingly include:

(a) How can the potential of IT be fully harnessed?

(b) How can IT be used not just as a tool or alternative,but as an agent of change?


SECTION I I

STRATEGIC PLANNING

This report has outlined and discussed a vari-ety of key strategic issues relating to the future ofcareers services in higher education. These issues needto be addressed at a variety of levels:

(a) National policy (see especially Section 5).

(b) Institutional policy (see especially Section 4).

(c) Careers service policy (see especially Sections 6-10).

I Uri If careers services are to take advantage of theopportunities open to them, and if institutions are to beable to structure careers services effectively in relationto their own strategic directions, a regular process ofstrategic planning is needed. The process will benefitfrom the active involvement of key stakeholders(students, academic staff, and employers). The presentreport may be helpful as a resource to support thisprocess.

MOM. The form of the process might be along thefollowing lines:

(a)

(b)

Where are we now?

CI What are the careers service's main strengths,weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOTanalysis)?

ID] What are the careers service's current coreactivities (cf. Section 6)?

0 What are its current supplementary activities(cf. Section 6)?

CI Who are its major partners/competitors insideand outside the institution?

Where do we want to be in (say) five years' time?

CI What vision do we have of the careers service'sfuture mission and purpose, and of its rela-tionship to the future mission and purposeof the institution (cf. Section 4)?

O What are the implications of likely changesin higher education and in the world of work(cf. Section 3)?

0 What are the implications of the likelynational policy context regarding careersguidance provision (cf. Section 5)?

CI Which strategic directions do we wantto pursue over the next five years(cf. Sections 6-8)?

CI What order of priority do we want to estab-lish between these strategic directions?

0 What are the risks of moving in these direc-tions, and how can these risks be minimised?

0 What structural form might the careersservice take in five years' time?

CI How do our professional structures andmethods need to be modified and developed(cf. Section 9)?

CD How do we harness IT as an agent of change(cf. Section 10)?

(c) How do we get there?

CD What SMART objectives do we want to setourselves for the short, medium and longterm (i.e. objectives which are Specific, withMeasureable outcomes that are Attainable andRelevant, incorporating a clear Time-scale)?

I= Who do we need to influence, and how dowe link our priorities to theirs?

(d) How will we review and measure whether we have gotthere?

53

ED What outcomes will measure success(cf. AGCAS, 1991)?

CI What stepping-stones will indicate that weare moving in the right direction?

0 What process of continuing reflection do weneed in order to review our goals and theextent to which we are achieving them?


APPENDIX A

CHECK-LIST OF STRATEGIC ISSUES

Section 3(a) What are the implications of the changing concept of

career for the ways in which careers services operate?

(b) What are the implications of the changes in thegraduate labour market, and in particular the grow-ing importance of SMEs?

(c) How are careers services to respond to the greaterdiversity of the student population in higher edu-cation?

(d) What are the implications of the moves towards amore flexible higher education system, integratedmore strongly into wider structures for lifelonglearning?

Section 4(a) To what extent is providing career support to stu-

dents regarded as part of the 'core offer' of the insti-tution, or as an optional additional service?

If it is an optional additional service, to whatextent can employers and/or students be expectedto pay for it, and what are the implications of exert-ing such charges?

(c) Would there be any advantages in 'outsourcing'parts or all of the service to an external supplier?What would be the disadvantages?

(d) If it is regarded as part of the 'core offer' and anembedded part of the institution, where is the ser-vice best located within the organisational structureto yield the potential benefits of such embedding?

(e) What links are needed between the careers serviceand senior management to realise the potentialbenefits of the service being institution-based?

(f) To what extent can the functions of careers servicesbe devolved to teaching departments, and whatforms of continuing expert support from careersservices are needed by teaching departments toensure quality of delivery?

(b)

Section S

(a) Is current provision for careers guidance in highereducation sufficient to yield the economic benefitsfrom its investment in higher education?

(b) If not, what would adequate provision comprise,and how might it be secured?

5 4

Should there be a lifelong careers guidance servicebased outside higher education institutions?

What should be the relationship between such aservice and careers services based inside highereducation institutions?

Should policy levers be used to secure a minimumstandard of careers guidance provision within insti-tutions?

If so, which policy levers should be adopted?

What comparative data need to be collected acrossinstitutions to monitor the effectiveness of suchlevers?

Section 6(a) What is the balance to be between (i) individual

and group guidance, (ii) information, and (iii)employer liaison and placement?

(b) Are current employer liaison and placement activi-ties, supported by the first-destinations data, suffi-cient sources of labour market information, and ifnot, how are these sources to be boosted and/orsupplemented?

(c) Should the core activities continue to be integratedin a single service, or be given a greater degree oforganisational separation?

Section 7(a) What is the scope within institutions for providing

integrated guidance support to students prior to,during and on exit from their courses?

(b) What is the scope within institutions for integrat-ing placement work on exit with course-relatedplacements and placements into part-time andvacation jobs?

(c) What is the scope within institutions for incorpo-rating career management skills into the curricu-lum, either separately or linked to wider concernsfor employability and personal transferable skills?

(d) What is the scope within institutions for fosteringthe career development of staff as well as students?

(e) How far should the careers service aim to be thedelivery vehicle for these various functions, andhow far should it seek to work with separate struc-tures developed to deliver them?


(0

(g)

(h)

What are the implications of these functions forthe role and position of careers services withininstitutions?

What are the benefits, disadvantages and resourceimplications of these different models?

In the context of limited resources, which strategicoptions meet the needs of students and the institu-tion, and provide high-quality, cost-effective solu-tions?

Section 8(a) What is the scope for extending services to cover

recent graduates both of the host institution andof other institutions?

(b) What is the scope for careers services to play a rolein making guidance available in the local commu-nity on a lifelong basis?

(c) What is the scope for building lifelong careers ser-vices for alumni?

(d) Which of these activities should the careers serviceengage in?

(e) How are the activities to be resourced?

(f) Should the careers service aim to deliver such activ-ities alone or in partnership with others?

(g) Which partners should it seek and what are theimplications of such partnerships?

Section 9

(a) How can the structure of AGCAS be adapted to sus-tain and extend the strong structures of profes-sional collaboration that have been developedacross careers services?

(b) How can more effective structures of professionaland career development be developed for staff, tobuild a wider range of expertise, and enable moreflexible movement in and out of careers services?

(c) How can clearer quality standards and benchmark-ing procedures be developed to assure the qualityof careers services?

Section 10(a) How can the potential of information technology

be fully harnessed?

(b) How can IT be used not just as a tool or alternative,but as an agent of change?


APPENDIX B

CONSULTATION PROCESS

The work on this report was carried out betweenOctober 1996 and February 1997. It involved a range ofconsultations and other sources:

1. Interviews with a number of people external tocareers services:

Richard Brown and Patrick Coldstream(Council for Industry and Higher Education)

0 Dr Bahram Bekhradnia (Higher EducationFunding Council for England)

CI Dr Roger Brown and Vivienne Rivis (HigherEducation Quality Council)

El Roly Cockman (Association of GraduateRecruiters)

CI Matthew Farrow (Confederation of BritishIndustry)

CI Sir Geoffrey Holland (University of Exeter)

CI Stephen McNair (National Institute of AdultContinuing Education)

CI Patricia Raderecht (Higher Education CareersServices Unit)

CI Shirley Trundle and Clare Matterson(National Commission of Inquiry into HigherEducation)

C7 Professor Leslie Wagner (Leeds MetropolitanUniversity; Committee of Vice-Chancellorsand Principals)

El Professor Gareth Williams (University ofLondon Institute of Education)

2. Telephone interviews with other people external tocareers services:

0 Jeff Collinson (BT Development andProcurement, Glasgow)

0 Norman Evans (Learning from Experience Trust)

El Trevor Fellowes (Higher Education andEmployment Division, Department forEducation and Employment)

O Lee Findell (National Union of Students)

CI Simon Hamm (European Business School,London)

0 Richard Hannage (Durham UniversityBusiness School)

.,

CI Dr Peter Hawkins (University of Liverpool)

0 Mary Lord (TEC National Council)

C7 Andrew Nelson (AN Associates)

CI Professor David Robertson (Liverpool JohnMoores University)

El Freda Tallantyre (Unilink, University ofNorthumbria)

Shorter telephone interviews were held with anumber of other people on specific issues.

3. Focus-group sessions with:

(a) A large-employer group comprising Keith Bell(Price Waterhouse), Mike Killing ley (MidlandBank), and Hugh Smith (BT).

(b) A group representing the viewpoints of small andmedium-sized employers: John Hickson (BusinessLink, CILNTEC); David Kingham (OxfordInnovation); Ruth Puddick (St John's InnovationCentre, Cambridge); Liz Rhodes (Shell TechnologyEnterprise Programme); Paul Soanes (iD BusinessDesign Centre, London).

(c) A group involved in student enterprise activities,brought together through STADIA: Maggie Boyle(University of Leeds); Gavin Lawrie (Universityof Wales, Bangor); Sean Mackney (CONTACT,Manchester); Gill Winfield (University of Warwick).

4. Two focus-group sessions with staff of careers ser-vices:

(a) From services with relatively limited resources:Sheila Cross (University College of Ripon and YorkSt John); Denise Has lam (University of Derby);Eileen Scott (University of Luton).

(b) A group of senior AGCAS officers (past and pre-sent): Margaret Dane (Herriot-Watt University);Keith Dugdale (University of Manchester/UMIST);Dr Richard Maynard (University of Birmingham);Margaret Wallis (University of Warwick).

Interviews were held with other careers-service staffincluding Tony Raban (University of Cambridge),and Dr Bernard Kingston and Dr Richard Pethen(University of Sheffield). Telephone interviews werealso held with a number of careers-service staff.

5G


5.

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

6.

7.

8.

Visits to three universities: Central Lancashire,Edinburgh and Warwick. At each institution, meet-ings were held with:

The vice-chancellor, relevant pro-vice-chancellor,and other relevant senior management.

Careers service staff at different levels.

A group of academic staff.

A group of students.

Written evidence submitted by 25 careers services,plus annual reports and other relevant documentssubmitted by 34 institutions. There was some over-lap between these groups: 47 institutions were cov-ered altogether.

Various AGCAS documents.

A review of relevant research literature and policydocuments, including a number of submissions tothe Dearing Inquiry.

9. Two meetings of a project advisory group chairedby Professor Sir Graeme Davies, Vice-Chancellor ofthe University of Glasgow (for list of members, seepage 2).

GLOSSARY

AGCAS Association of Graduate Careers AdvisoryServices (see para 9.3)

CSU Higher Education Careers Services Unit(see para 9.4)

CVCP

DfEE

LEC

SME

TEC

Committee of Vice-Chancellors andPrincipals

Department for Education and Employment

Local Enterprise Company

small or medium-sized enterprise

Training and Enterprise Council


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