The Student Academic Experience Survey
The latest Student Academic Experience survey has been published and suggests 59% of students are “fairly satisfied” with their course – and a further 28% are “very satisfied”.
The survey is carried out by the Higher Education Policy Institute and the Higher Education Academy and aims to examine levels of satisfaction among undergraduates. The survey has also revealed the widening differences in perceptions of value for money between students in England where tuition fees are now £9,000 per year and in Scotland, where tuition is still free.
Only 7% of the students surveyed in England believed they had received ‘good’ or ‘very good’ value for money from their courses – compared to 35% in Scotland.
The survey also looked at student’s hours taught by staff and found on average students had around 12 hours of contact each week.
Keystone at PlaceNet 2015
Keystone Employment Group joined other experts in the field of student employability at the 2015 PlaceNet conference, this year held in Bournemouth.
Delegates heard from a number of employers who run highly successful graduate intake initiatives, such as Nestle and Enterprise Rent-A-Car and shared experiences on how students can prepare themselves for working life.
Keystone gave a presentation on the online Talent Bank solutions they provide to a number of schools, colleges and universities and took a number of questions on how the system works.
Malcolm Paice and Anup Mistry represented Keystone at PlaceNet 2015 and explained how a Talent Bank portal allows employers to directly offer work placements to students. The educational institutes can then readily monitor and report on which firms are offering their students work experience and paid work opportunities.
Malcolm Paice, COO for Keystone said: “PlaceNet is the ideal place to demonstrate how a Talent Bank can very quickly boost the student employability prospects for any college or university. Everyone here is in the business of helping graduates find jobs and with all the tools they need online that process is getting faster, cheaper and more efficient.”
More universities bring recruitment ‘inhouse’
A university is the same as any other large business or organisation – it thrives on its people and needs to employ and engage people in a wide range of part and full time roles. However, educational institutions are very different from other businesses in one important respect – they cannot reclaim VAT, so if a university is using a recruitment agency to source talent there is a lot of cost to absorb.
Increasingly, universities are ‘doing it themselves’ by having an -in-house team utilising a bespoke Talent Bank such as the solution provided by Keystone Employment Group. This allows an organisation to stop using external recruitment agencies and save on their fees and of course the VAT they attract.
By using an online portal recruitment processes are also far quicker and dynamic, with available candidates presented directly to the hiring manager immediately as they apply.
One London university is now saving over £600,000 per year in VAT this way.
Creating a ‘passport to employability’
What is the best documentary evidence of a students’ employability skills? What should they use as their ‘employability passport’? Is it their HEAR (Higher Education Achievement Record)? Or is it supposed to be their LinkedIn or Facebook profile?
With over 80% of employers looking up job candidates online it is vital that everyone who is a job-seeker has a decent, professional online profile. That is harder for graduates who may have limited work experience.
A Talent Bank solution from Keystone provides students with a live, validated online professional profile as standard. This is not only a meaningful and fully validated record of their academic achievements but also details all the work experience, assignments, voluntary work and paid work they have completed.
Managers can include references on the profile and because it’s provided safely and securely online, it is available 24/7 anywhere in the world- ideal for overseas graduates.
By having a single, comprehensive profile online, students only need to point prospective employers to one place to see everything they have achieved academically and vocationally.
Keystone Employment Group is a fully approved supplier to the LUPC and SUPC purchasing framework agreements.
To find out more please contact us: info@keystone-jobs.com or call us on: 0844 225 1010
Keystone will be at the SUPC Travel & Temporary Agency Event at Woburn House on 14th July – we hope to see you there!
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