Graduate Outcomes Insights

Following our introduction to the Graduate Outcomes Survey, read some insights from Graduate Outcomes on UCL graduates.

The Graduate Outcomes survey is the biggest annual social survey in the UK and aims to capture the destinations of university graduates 15 months after they have completed their studies. The survey only takes 10 minutes to complete and helps institutions, prospective students and the Government make important decisions based on graduates’ development and career destinations. When the time comes, the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) contacts graduates via email with a unique survey link or via call or text to complete the survey over the phone.

Below you can find some exciting information on the career destinations of UCL graduates who completed their course in the academic year 2020-21:

• 67.4% of the graduates who responded were employed in highly-skilled work and 13.7% continued to post-graduate studies.
• From the graduates who went on to work, 18.1% were in Teaching or other educational activities and 18.0% were in Health and Social Care followed by an 8.4% employed in Academic Research and Higher Education.
• Secondary Education Teaching professionals, Generalist Medical Practitioners and Primary Education Teaching professionals were the most common job titles with Programmers and Software Development professionals, Finance and Investment Analysts and Advisers and Management Consultants and Business Analysts ranking just below them.

• UCL, the NHS, Deloitte LLP, KPMG LLP, UK Government, EY, PwC, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Kubrick Group and University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust are only few of the companies that employed UCL graduates.
• 59.4% of the graduates whose main activity was work were employed in London and 17.2% in the rest of the UK while China, United States, Germany, Greece, France and Italy were some of the top countries graduates were working.
• The average salary of working graduates was £37,369 and the median was £32,000.
• The positive destination of graduates (working in high-skilled jobs, in further study or taking time out) was 91.5% in 2020, slightly increased from 90.4% for the previous academic year.

3.7% of the employed graduates were self-employed or freelancing, 2.5% were running their own business while the vast majority with 88% were working for an employer.

• 30.5% of UCL graduates have undertaken a course since graduating from UCL with the most recent place of study being UCL, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, The University of Cambridge, The University of Oxford and King’s College London.
• 85.7% of graduates agreed that their current activity is meaningful and important to them and 80.7% agreed that their current activity fits with their future plans.

If you are interested in the data above, you can find more information about Graduates Outcomes results here.

If you graduated between February and April 2022, HESA will contact you to complete the survey somewhere around June and August 2023.