Graduate Outcomes SOC 2020 update: UK, 2017/18

This bulletin has been produced by HESA and has been released according to the arrangements approved by the UK Statistics Authority. The data presented in this bulletin is based on the 2017/18 Graduate Outcomes survey. The statistics in this bulletin are derived by HESA from data collected from all publicly funded HE providers in the UK (including The Open University), alternative providers that submit student data to HESA and further education colleges in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. For the 2017/18 release of Graduate Outcomes, the dataset was initially coded using SOC 2010, which was the current framework during census week for all four cohorts of the first year of data collection. SOC 2020, which updated the SOC framework to reflect a changing labour market, was released on 14 February 2020, after the SOC coding of 2017/18 data to SOC 2010 was largely complete. HESA rapidly analysed the new framework and determined that it was suitable for use with the Graduate Outcomes survey. Given the scale of work involved it was not possible to introduce SOC 2020 in time for the initial dissemination of the 2017/18 results. In order to ensure that graduates are coded according to the most up-to-date framework, HESA committed to adopt SOC 2020 from the 2018/19 Graduate Outcomes dataset. At the same time, we undertook to recode the 2017/18 dataset to SOC 2020 to ensure a consistent time-series. We have now completed the work of re-basing our coding approach to follow the SOC 2020 framework, and have re-coded the data and quality-assured our results.