The aim of this project is to research the education-to-work trajectories of higher education graduates in the UK, with a particular focus on the impact of socio-economic differences.

The project is organised into three main strands which will explore; SES gradients in higher education study trajectories; widening participation in ‘better graduate jobs’; and widening participation outliers, asking what makes the exceptions exceptional?

The main data source for the research will be the Longitudinal Destination of Leavers of Higher Education survey (DLHE) collected by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). The unique student identifier used in the design of the survey allows data linkage with student administrative data, also collected by HESA, as well as data from the National Pupil Database (NPD).

In order to obtain information on job characteristics other than those covered by DLHE and HESA data and to explore alternative measures of job quality (skill use, skill requirements, work autonomy and flexibility/security), the project will also use different datasets containing characteristics of jobs in specific sectors (2 digit level) and occupations (1 digit level), including; the European Working Conditions Survey (combined survey rounds from 2010 and 2015); the UK Workplace Employment Relations Survey from 2011; and the PIAAC UK data set from 2015.

In pooling these rich data sources, this project will reconstruct full pre-tertiary education journeys and achievements, and higher education paths and early careers of a substantial sample of graduates, creating a unique retrospective biographical survey.