The Survey:
Stage 1 Choices, funding and expectations: applying to higher education.
The Stage 1 survey went live in the summer of 2006. Applicants were encouraged to complete the survey, regardless of whether they decided to go into higher education, pursue other options or if they didn’t get the UCAS points to progress further.
There were nearly 130,000 useable responses from 277 higher education institutions. Of which:
- 105,000 were in higher education
- 22,000 doing other things (such as working)
- 86% were UK applicants
- 14% were international applicants
- 80% were aged 21 or under.
Stage 2 Plans, aspirations and realities: the experience of students in their first year of higher education.
- Over 80% of Futuretrack respondents agreed that the tuition and learning support their received on their course was excellent.
- Students studying at highest tariff universities were most likely to be satisfied with access to library resources and web-based learning facilities.
- Students from general HE colleges were most likely to take part in extra-curricular activities outside the university.
- 36% worked both during term-time and in vacations.
Stage 3 How higher education courses and study contexts impacted on students’ assessments, evaluations and predictions of educational outcomes.
- More than half of the mature students hoped to find employment related to their long-term career plans in the year after they graduated. They were the only group for whom this figure was over 50 per cent.
- In most regions, between 40-50 per cent of the finalists had undertaken paid work, but students in Northern Ireland and Scotland were considerably more likely to have done so, whereas those in Wales and the East of England were least likely to have had such jobs.
- Mature students, male students, black students, students studying discipline-based academic subjects, students studying at higher or medium tariff universities, and European or overseas students were more aware than other respondents of the services their University Careers Service offered.
