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The Society for Research into Higher Education

Category Archives: Research

Holly Henderson


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Possible selves: One concept, many conversations

By Holly Henderson

One of my favourite things to do is to hear passionate people in dialogue about their research. At the second joint network SRHE event on possible selves earlier this month, it was impossible not to be excited by the quality of this dialogue. The event’s joint hosting by the Post-Compulsory Education and Access and Widening Participation networks set the tone for collaboration across boundaries; speakers included early career researchers and established professors, from the UK and abroad, and from sociological and psychological disciplinary perspectives[1]. Perhaps it is unusual to have a series of events on a single concept, like the possible selves concept[2]. But to see these events as singular in focus would be to misunderstand the complexities of educational research. In fact, thinking about this particular concept has enabled us to bring out the concept’s relationship to discussions of methodological approaches, data analysis, diverse research contexts within the field of Higher Education Research, and different disciplinary perspectives.

The possible selves concept seems, at first glance, disarmingly simple. It accords with an instinctive understanding of the future and its influence on the present, particularly in educational contexts. The concept suggests that we have multiple imagined future selves, which influence and structure our behaviour in the present. In educational terms, the most straightforward way of seeing this is to think about the ways that courses of study, chosen in the present, are seen to lead towards a future goal, whether that is course completion, further study or a career. Look further into the literature Continue reading →


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Fear and Loathing in the Business School

By Jacqueline Aldridge

We all enjoy grumbling about the business schools in our institutions.  How their multi-million pound buildings swallow resources. How students are lured from other disciplines with shallow promises of employability. How the serious financial clout of business schools allows them to trample less worldly academic departments.

But what about the intellectual place of the academics and academic disciplines housed within their shiny and expensive walls? My doctoral research examines business schools as university departments that are staffed by conventionally-trained career academics, and considers them in this light. I suggest that there are at least three good reasons why we might pity the poor business school and the academics who work within them.

Business is a dirty word

The University does not have a happy relationship with ‘business’ and this antipathy has long roots.  Continue reading →


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The number of graduates in non-graduate jobs is still high

By Heike Behle

A recent IER report prepared for HEFCE and SRHE shows that the proportion of employed graduates working in non-graduate jobs during their first year after graduation has remained high. Fifteen months after graduation, approximately 36 per cent of all employed graduates from three year courses and 30 per cent of all employed graduates from four year courses were still working in non-graduate jobs, defined as jobs for which a graduate level education is inappropriate.

The definition and empirical classification of occupations in non-graduate or graduate jobs is contested and there is a plethora of different ways to measure the amount of graduates in non-graduate jobs. This report uses a definition from Elias and Purcell (2004 )[1], based on the type of work typically performed in a job and the extent to which such work makes use of the skills and knowledge gained through higher education. This classification varies from that of the recent White Paper [2]  where occupations of the first three major SOC groups are identified as professional jobs.

new-picture-1The report compares the early pathways of graduates from two leaving cohorts: those who graduated in 1999 (‘class of 1999’) and those who graduated from three year courses in 2009 and from four year courses in 2010 (‘class of 2009/2010’) as illustrated in the graph opposite.

On average, all graduates in both cohorts were employed for approximately ten months, in total. However, the proportion of graduates from the class of 2009/2010 who never entered employment during the first fifteen months after graduation was between 26 per cent and 29 per cent, nearly twice the proportion, compared to those who graduated ten years earlier (class of 1999). One explanation could be that many graduates enter further study in order to avoid unemployment or employment in non-graduate jobs.

Age, social background, specific subjects, type of HEI and the class of degree were significant influences in both cohorts while differences existed with regards to gender, mobility and work experience. In line with other current reports (the Shadbolt Review of Computer Sciences degree accreditation and graduate employability, the Wakeham Review of STEM degree provision and graduate employability, and HEFCE analysis of differential outcomes of graduates) , the increasing relevance of work experience was highlighted. For the class of 1999 work experiences did not have a significant impact on the likelihood to work in a graduate job. However, this was the case for those who graduated ten years later.

This was also reflected in a brief qualitative research study in which many graduates reported that employers expected them to have work experience but were not prepared to offer opportunities for graduates. Also, many graduates reported the negative impact of being stuck in non-graduate roles which they defined as a vicious circle, in which their current employment had implications for their self-confidence, which might lead to a degrading of skills and knowledge. As a result, their capacity to leave the non-graduate job and find employment in a graduate position might be limited.

[1] Elias, P. and Purcell, K. (2004) SOC (HE): A classification of occupations for studying the graduate labour market. http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/ier/research/completed/7yrs2/rp6.pdf

[2] BIS (2016) Higher education: success as a knowledge economy: teaching excellence, social mobility, and student choice. Can be downloaded here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/higher-education-success-as-a-knowledge-economy-white-paper

Heike Behle is a Research Fellow at the Warwick Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick (http://www.warwick.ac.uk/ier). Heike is also a co-convenor of the SRHE’s Employability, Enterprise and Work-based Learning Network


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The Annual Conference of the German Association for HE Research

By Susi Poli

It was by chance that I sent my application for a sponsored delegate place at the Annual Conference of the German Association for Higher Education Research (GfHF), held in Munich in April. SRHE had called for a student/early career researcher, fully sponsored by GfHF, to engage in their panel discussion at the pre-conference on making the connection between HE research and practice. Surprisingly or not, I was shortlisted and I got the place!

Before leaving for the conference I became aware that there is a distinction to be made between ‘early stage researcher’ as defined by the EU, and ‘early career researcher’ (ECR) based on UK terminology. The first refers to the European Commission’s Charter for Researchers, which clearly states the professional status of the researcher from the early stage, ie from the doctoral phase onwards. In contrast the UK considers its doctoral candidates as ‘students’ and doesn’t afford them professional status (Hancock et al, 2015). However, I was happy to be seen as an early career/stage ‘something’ or researcher, appreciated even more as a woman and an experienced/mature (or both) professional in her mid-40s.

The leading questions in preparation for the panel discussion were: Continue reading →

Paul Ashwin


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David Watson’s Scholarly Legacy: Towards a Conscience for Higher Education Research

By Paul Ashwin

I am offering this reflection on David Watson’s scholarly legacy partly on behalf of the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE). David was president of the SRHE from 2005-20012 and partly as someone whose thinking has been strongly influenced by David’s work.

I have always been suspicious of lists. They make me wonder about the relations between the different items and how together they form a coherent whole. I wonder about whether the items are mutually exclusive or if they overlap and how. I carried this suspicion with me into David Watson’s brilliant SRHE presidential addresses, as David outlined ‘Eight Category Mistakes in Higher Education Discourses’, the ten commandments of the ‘Oath for Contemporary Higher Education’ and ‘The Ten Laws of Academic Life’. Despite my suspicion, these lists captured something fundamental about contemporary higher education experience. They were wise, thoughtful and always challenging. So in reflecting on and celebrating David’s scholarly legacy, it seemed fitting that this seemed to form itself as a list. In revisiting David’s work and thinking about where it takes us, my sense was that it gives us much of the work that is needed to form a conscience for higher education research.

1. Know your history

David was an historian and his scholarly work often contains phrases such as “If you look at the long sweep of history” or “If you take the historical view”, which always preceded the demolishing of some supposedly truly original policy or research idea. Continue reading →


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Doing Discourse Analysis

By Geraldine Murphy

I was lucky enough to grab a place on the SRHE Discourse Analysis workshop on the 24th of March in London. This session was facilitated by the very experienced @karensmith_HE and covered a range of approaches to undertaking Discourse Analysis within research across a variety of disciplines. The workshop was aimed at researchers at all levels of experience/confidence and at various stages within their projects. The mix of projects, levels and experiences of the delegates made for rich discussion around the best uses and applications of the approach including when to use….and when not to! Continue reading →

Ian Mc Nay


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Ian McNay writes…

By Ian McNay

How many Eleanors can you name? Roosevelt, Marx, Bron, Aquitaine, Rigby…add your own. Why am I asking this? Because it is a new metric for widening access. The recent issue of People Management, the journal of CIPD, reports that in 2014 the University of Oxford admitted more girls named Eleanor than students who had received free school meals. Those who were taught at private schools were 55% more likely to go to Oxbridge than student who received free school meals. Those two universities have even reduced the proportion of students they admitted who came from lower socio-economic groups in the decade from 2004=5, from 13.3% to 10% at Oxford and from 12.4% to 10.2% at Cambridge. Other Russell Group universities also recorded a fall, according to HESA data. So, second question: how many people do you know who have had free school meals or whose children have had? Not a visible/audible characteristic: they do not wear wristlet identifiers. But your university planning office will have the stats if you want to check its record. Continue reading →