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Education and outreach

Education and outreach

Taking the long view

20 Oct 2016
Taken from the October 2016 issue of Physics World

A new study of the long-term employment prospects of UK science and engineering students suggests that talk of a skills shortage is overblown, with most graduates in these disciplines taking jobs outside science. Researchers Patrick White and Emma Smith discuss their findings and what they mean for current physics students

Cartoon image of a man and woman in business suits looking through telescopes
Future proof: taking a long view on your career options. (Courtesy: iStock/erhui1979)

If you are studying a science subject, you have probably read that industries that recruit science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) students are experiencing skills shortages. In the UK, both the government and employers have described these shortages as reaching “crisis” levels, claiming that a lack of suitably skilled workers is harming the country’s economy and making it less competitive internationally.

However, such “crisis” reports are not new or confined to the UK. Similar accounts have been regularly published here since the end of the Second World War, and they have also appeared in the US, Australia and several European countries. The common theme is that a current or imminent shortage of highly skilled science workers – often blamed on poor science teaching in school – is a threat to the economic and technological development of the nation.

One reading of these reports is that the recruitment of highly skilled science workers has always been a problem that is difficult to solve. This would be a straightforward explanation of the situation – except for the fact that not everybody agrees there is, or ever has been, a shortage. Working out what we mean by a “shortage” can be challenging and, unfortunately, we don’t always have the data available to find out how many STEM workers a country needs.

A problem of supply and demand

Despite the dearth of good data, governments have generally responded to reports of skills shortages with new and expensive policy initiatives. Because employers are most concerned about the numbers of applicants to highly skilled STEM jobs, the ultimate aim of many of these interventions has been to increase the number of graduates with science degrees. However, there are two big problems with trying to match the supply of STEM workers with demand.

The first problem is on the supply side. Producing highly skilled STEM graduates is a long-term process. Students can opt out of science subjects at various points and increasing the number of STEM graduates means persuading young people to continue studying the sciences throughout their education. Those who have already dropped the sciences are unlikely (and often unable) to pick them up later. This means that increasing the STEM workforce has to start in the early stages of education. We cannot drastically increase the number of STEM students over the course of just one or two years: plans must be made decades, rather than years, in advance.

The other problem concerns demand. As we have seen recently, future changes such as those promised by the UK’s vote to leave the EU can have immediate and considerable impact on the economy and, in turn, on the labour market. Among physicists, the decision to renew the Trident nuclear programme will have an effect on future demand for those in certain sub-specialities, as would a decision to scrap it. Whether the proposed Hinkley Point C nuclear power station is built – and perhaps which countries might be involved in funding it – will also have implications for demand. These and countless other developments all affect the demand for highly skilled STEM workers, and they do so on a timescale that is much quicker than the process of producing STEM graduates. This makes matching the supply of STEM workers to the likely demand for them very difficult indeed.

Even if we could predict an increase or decrease in the demand for STEM workers, we really need to know which kind of STEM workers are needed, and what STEM subjects students should study. Lumping all STEM graduates together isn’t actually that useful: we need to know what subject specialists are needed most urgently. To take the previous nuclear example, a surge in the number of biology graduates isn’t going to help meet increased demand for radiation physicists or nuclear engineers.

Graph showing graduate earnings

First jobs after graduation

In our study, which was funded by a grant from the Nuffield Foundation, we aimed to find out whether there really is a shortage of highly skilled STEM workers (and if so, in which areas) by bringing together analyses of the best available data in the area. We first looked at data collected by the UK’s Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) on the destinations of all graduates six months after they have finished their degrees. Every UK graduate is sent questions on their employment status and response rates are very high, at around 80%. Although HESA also collects data on the longer-term career outcomes, these data are based on only a sample of graduates and have very low response rates (22% in 2012), so here we have only used the data on immediate destinations.

We looked at HESA data from 1994/5 to 2010/11 because it was the best data for making long-term comparisons (the survey changed after 2011). Although the number of students going to university doubled during this period, we found that the patterns of early graduate destinations did not change very much. In general terms, STEM graduates (excluding those studying medicine or dentistry) didn’t have any real labour market advantage over those taking other kinds of degrees, and similar proportions of both groups entered “graduate” jobs (a term that, in essence, denotes jobs that involve some form of managerial, associate/professional or technical expertise). STEM graduates in general were also just as likely as non-STEM graduates to find themselves in positions at the lower end of the occupational scale, working in jobs such as routine sale assistants, caring roles and other elementary functions.

There were some differences between STEM subjects. Graduates in engineering, for example, were more likely than average to find themselves in highly skilled STEM jobs immediately after graduating, while those with degrees the biological sciences were actually less likely to be employed in such positions than those with degrees in some non-STEM subjects. Physicists were somewhere between the two. In every year we studied, between 5 and 10% of STEM graduates were unemployed six months after they graduated.

A relatively high proportion (around a quarter for all disciplines) of graduates in the biological, mathematical and physical sciences stayed on for postgraduate study. This could suggest that some of them were unable – or at least felt unable – to get the kind of job they wanted with just an undergraduate degree. In 2010/11, some 37% of physics graduates stayed on in full-time postgraduate study. If we include those who carried on studying part-time, balancing their studies with work, this figure rises to 46%.

In the same year, less than 5% of physics graduates who found employment were working as “science professionals” six months after graduating. Another 8% worked as “engineering professionals”, and the same proportion were teachers. A much larger proportion (19%), worked in business, finance and statistics, but the largest proportion (26%) were in non-graduate jobs, with 14% working in sales, customer services or other elementary occupations.

The occupational destination of students varies considerably depending on the type of higher education institution they have attended. STEM graduates from Russell Group institutions (such as the universities of Oxford, Manchester and Cardiff) had similar levels of full-time employment compared to those who attended institutions belonging to the University Alliance or Million Plus (UA/M+) groups – predominantly made up of former polytechnics such as the universities of Coventry, Bolton and Nottingham Trent. But a larger proportion of Russell Group STEM graduates gained graduate-level positions and they were almost three times as likely to enter highly skilled STEM jobs. Russell Group STEM graduates were also more likely than those from UA/M+ institutions to remain in education. However, similar proportions from both types of university found themselves unemployed six months after graduation (see table).

Looking further afield

The other data sets we used in our research were the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) and the 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS). Both of these “longitudinal” studies have tracked the education and careers of all people born in a particular week of the year these studies started. The 9000 or so participants in the BCS70 are now in their mid-40s and those in the NCDS are in their late 50s. The data collected for these studies allowed us to look at the long-term career trajectories of STEM graduates and to compare them with those of graduates in other subjects and also with non-graduates. This is important because it may take some time for graduates to establish their careers, and people also may move in and out of different kinds of jobs over their lifetimes. Because it is more recent and more complete, we will concentrate on the BCS70 data here, but results for the NCDS study were very similar.

Our analyses showed that the long-term career trajectories of STEM graduates and those with degrees in other subjects weren’t very different. By age 30 similar proportions had graduate jobs (86% of STEM and 84% of non-STEM graduates) and the most common jobs for both groups were teaching and “functional management” (managerial roles in finance, marketing, sales and so on). As they got older, many of those working in scientific jobs moved out of these roles, often into management positions. People were unlikely to move into scientific positions later in their careers, however, meaning that overall, fewer older respondents worked in science. If STEM graduates hadn’t entered highly skilled science jobs in their 20s they weren’t likely to do so later.

In fact, we found that surprisingly few STEM graduates worked in professional scientific, research or engineering positions at any time in their careers. At no point between the ages of 26 and 42 were more than 22% working as engineering, information technology and science-related professions (the three key “shortage” occupations) and by age 42 this figure had fallen to only 14%. A comparable proportion (12%) of 42-year-olds worked as teachers and 13% worked as functional managers. Teaching and management were also common destinations for graduates with degrees in other subjects.

Crisis? What crisis?

Our research shows little evidence of a shortage of STEM graduates of “crisis” proportions. Although most STEM graduates find work, and most of these jobs are graduate-level positions, only a minority of them work in highly skilled STEM positions; many more work in teaching, business or management than in science. This situation isn’t new, as our analysis of cohort data shows, and looks unlikely to change in the near future.

If employers are really having trouble filling essential jobs in their science industries, then why are so many STEM graduates working in jobs outside of science? One common explanation is that universities are not providing students with the skills that employers need. But as we have seen, it is nearly impossible to predict what skills will be needed in the future. In any case, universities have to provide a broad, general education; they offer more than just vocational training for particular positions.

Another possibility is that professions outside of science are regarded as more attractive by science graduates, either because they pay more or are seen as more interesting. There are rarely reports of a shortage of bankers, for example, even though the sector relies on recruiting graduates with the kind of mathematical skills that are common among STEM students. Is it actually the case, as many economists argue, that while there is no shortage of STEM graduates, there is a shortage of those who are willing to work for the pay and conditions that are currently on offer?

We would certainly not want to discourage any students from studying science. One of us (ES) is a former secondary school chemistry teacher and the other has taught undergraduates in the sociology of science. We both support science education, and we think that having graduates with science degrees is important for the economy but also for society more widely. Having more politicians with scientific backgrounds, for example, would almost certainly lead to better policy decisions in many areas.

STEM graduates have at least as good career outcomes as those studying other subjects and in some cases slightly better. But we are concerned that the regular scare stories about supposed shortages of scientists may unrealistically raise the expectations of students studying, or planning to study, STEM subjects at university. Science graduates have very promising career prospects – but so do graduates in general. Our research shows that differences in career prospects between degree subjects can easily be exaggerated and that in some respects where you study is as important as the subject on your degree certificate.

For some careers you will certainly need to have a science degree. But bear in mind that most STEM graduates never work in these types of jobs. Having a degree will undoubtedly help your career prospects, but you should study science because you enjoy it, not because you think it will give you a “leg up” in the graduate labour market. Unfortunately, our results show it probably won’t.

What physics graduates really do

What physics graduates really do

Physics graduates are employed in a wide range of sectors both inside and outside the STEM field. From our research the most likely jobs for physics graduates are (in no particular order) in the following areas:

  • physical science
  • IT analysis
  • software programming and development
  • business and financial occupations
  • secondary school teaching
  • higher education

While there are still many more male physics graduates than female, the types of jobs they do tend to be similar. However, by far the single largest occupational group for female physics graduates is secondary school teaching.

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