Futuretrack is the most extensive investigation of the relationship between higher education and employment ever undertaken in the UK.

All 2005-6 UCAS applicants were invited by UCAS to access the Futuretrack online survey via a secure link which guaranteed that responses would be treated in confidence, seen only by the research team, with no individual level information passed to any third party or published in a way that breached this confidentiality and the database contains usable responses from just under 138,000 respondents. Although the response rate has fallen at each stage from the initial 130,000 members of the cohort who completed the Stage 1 survey, it continues to provide robust and comprehensive data to clarify the socio-economic and educational variables that determine career decision-making, access to and use of career information, and is now investigating early the career experiences of graduates who represent the full spectrum of full-time undegraduate course-leavers, from the longest-established and most elite to the newest and most recently-established universities and higher education colleges, covering the full range of undergraduate courses, subjects odf studyand disciplines.

The diversity of the population involved and the scope of the study makes it particularly valuable as a source of data:

• it is longitudinal
• it includes overseas students studing on undegraduate programmes in the UK as well as UK-domiciled respondents;
• the research team is multi-disciplinary;
• it includes UCAS applicants who deferred, took gap years, did not complete courses, and some who never proceeded to full-time HE and took different career paths;
• because it was drawn ffrom the entire population of UCAS 2005/06 applicants and the full applicant profile is known, the responses can be weighted to be representative of the original population;
• the research process has benefited from support and advice from representatives of all the main HE stakeholders' organisations, including government and policy communities, but it has remained wholly independent academic research research, sponsored by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit. The sole interest of both the research team and the sponsor is in establishing the most accurate possible account of the challenges and opportunities encountered by undergraduates and graduate labour market entrants, to provide robust evidence to inform all those with an interest in the relationship between higher education, career decison-making and employment.

Findings have been and will continue to be presented to UK policy and practitioner stakeholder organisations, representatives of which are involved in the projects advisory committee, consulted throughout the programme and given access to findings prior to publication, and findings are being widely presented at UK and overseas academic and practitioner conferences.

The programme of research is directed by Professor Kate Purcell, and Professor Peter Elias, currently seconded to work for 50 per cent of his time as ESRC Strategic Advisor ( data resources) has worked throughout with her on the survey design and statistical management. Ritva Ellison is responsible for integration and management of the longitudinal dataset. Other researchers working on the core development, analysis and writing are Gaby Atfield and Dr Heike Behle. Further Institute researchers are co-opted from time to time to contribute to particular aspects of analysis. The research is sponsored by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit HESCU, and members of the HECSU research team have also contributed to analysis of findings, particularly related to careers guidance material. Meet the Research team here.