Service comes careering bang up-to-date

Employability and career success are what everybody expects from higher education. Tony Watts outlines the role university careers services have to play.

The Dearing report seems likely to put careers services centre stage. Leaks from the inquiry suggest that the report will make strong recommendations about the need for greater attention to employability within a more student-driven system. This provides new opportunities and new challenges to careers services.

My report on strategic directions for careers services in higher education in the light of the changes taking place in higher education and at work will be published next week. Commissioned by the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services to position careers services for the debates that will follow Dearing, it is the first report on higher education careers services since the 1964 Heyworth report on university appointments boards.

The Heyworth report reads like a document from a long-lost age. It describes the role of university appointments boards in a relatively homogenous university sector comprising just 25 universities. It recommended that the aim should be one appointments officer for every 100 final-year students "available for employment".

The number of United Kingdom universities is now nearing the 100 mark; there are also many colleges offering higher education. In 1960/61 there were 92,000 full-time first-degree students; by 1995/96 there were 860,500, as well as 174,100 part-time students.

At the same time, there have been dramatic changes in the graduate labour market. Recruitment into formal graduate training schemes within large companies is now a small-minority activity.

Many large employers recruit graduates into jobs previously carried out by non-graduates. Large numbers of graduates enter small and medium-sized organisations. More enter jobs on short fixed-term contracts. Many take longer to find a launch pad for their careers. Career paths are likely to be more complex and fragmented.

In response to these changes, the role of careers services has been transformed. More attention is now given to guidance as well as placement. A much wider variety of methods is used. Instead of the hour-long one-to-one interview as the core activity, many services have been redesigned on an open-access basis with a wide variety of resources, including computer-aided guidance systems. Brief personal help is available from information staff and from careers advisers operating on a "surgery" basis; the traditional long interview is for students needing more intensive personal help.

In many institutions, too, more attention is now being given to group sessions. In some cases these take the form of structured careers education programmes, often provided by teaching departments with the careers service in a supportive role. These programmes are designed to develop career management skills: an important aspect of employability.

Many careers services are now offering a wider range of services to students. These include involvement in guidance activities with students considering module choices or changes of course. They also include arranging course-related placements, and/or placements into part-time and vacation jobs. Many provide inter-disciplinary programmes of career insight courses, work shadowing and mentoring schemes.

Careers services have also developed provision for additional client groups. More students seem now to defer serious job-hunting until after graduation; many take some time to find a job suited to their aspirations and skills. Sustained support is therefore needed during this period. A "mutual aid" scheme enables students to access help near to where they live. In addition, some services have developed longer-term services for their own alumni; others have developed special programmes for unemployed graduates in the local community.

The careers service can provide a brokerage role between the institution and employers. For the institution, it provides information on the labour market to assist academic planning. For employers, it provides a "one-stop shop" in the institution.

Within a student-driven lifelong learning system, there is scope for many of these services to be developed a lot further. But the staffing levels recommended by Heyworth have receded into the mists of fantasy. The best-staffed services have one careers adviser per 1,000-1,500 students; in about two institutions in five, however, the ratio is one per 2,500 - and in some cases much higher.

This means that careers services have to evaluate their priorities very carefully. Building on the range of current activities, a number of possible strategic directions can be identified. They are not mutually exclusive. But it may be difficult to pursue all of them within an integrated organisational structure.

Institutions of higher education are now scrutinising more carefully which activities are essential to their purpose, and which are additional activities that might be charged for separately or left for other organisations to undertake.

The policy they adopt towards careers services is likely to be particularly significant, bearing in mind that employability and career success are what government, employers and students expect from higher education. There are also issues here for government about the level of guidance entitlement required to yield economic benefits from its investment in higher education. My report is designed to help careers services, their institutions, the government, and other stakeholders (notably employer and student organisations), to review the role and realise the potential of such services.

Tony Watts is the director of the National Institute for Careers Education and Counselling.His report Strategic Directions for Careers Services in Higher Education will be publishedon June 24.