Business and administrative studies : Destinations

Table 1, drawn from the Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education (DHLE) survey 2009-2010, shows the destinations of the first degrees that together make up the business and administrative studies cohort.

Business Management

73.8% of business and management graduates had entered employment or were working and studying six months after graduation, compared to 69.8% of all first degree graduates. The proportion of graduates choosing to continue in full time education and training has dropped back from the 2009 high of 8.9% to the figure reported in 2008 (7.5%). This continues to be below the average for all graduates from the 2009/10 cohort (13.5%). 9.7% of business and management graduates were unemployed at the time of the survey which has remained fairly

Source: DLHE 2009/10 

constant compared to the proportion in 2009 (9.8%), and remains higher than the 8.5% of first degree graduates as a whole. It is worth noting that some of the larger organisations that offer management training programmes accept only those with a 2:1 or above.

Accountancy

20.7% of accountancy students were working and studying compared with 7.6% of graduates from all subjects; this is not surprising as those wanting to follow their degree path into accountancy will need to supplement their qualifications with those of one of the professional accounting bodies, such as ICAEW, ACCA and CIMA. When those in full time employment are added to the working and studying figure, the employment rate of accountancy graduates is still higher compared to the employment rate of graduates from all disciplines (71.6% compared with 69.8%), and has increased from last year’s 69.7%. Those recorded as unemployed continued to be higher than all first degree graduates (11.0% compared with 8.5%), but has decreased from 12.5% in 2009.

Marketing

Of the business and administrative graduates, those with marketing degrees are significantly more likely to be in employment or working and studying (76%, compared with accountancy 71.6% and business and management 73.8%). Only 4.4% of marketing graduates chose to do only further study/training, far below the 13.5% of all graduates as a whole, and significantly less than the 7.5% of 2009’s marketing graduates. This low figure may be due to marketing employers not requiring an MSc to get into entry level marketing occupations, but this isn’t the only factor that graduates take into consideration when thinking about starting a post-graduate qualification. Marketing graduates from 2009/10 had a higher than average unemployment rate at 9.9% compared to 8.5% of graduates from all disciplines.