I’ve previously blogged about BME attainment issues, and researched the data pertaining to our university on how degree classification can be affected by ethnicity and disability, so a few recent news items were therefore of interest.
“As the job market becomes more competitive it is increasingly important for young people to make themselves as employable as possible. Higher education is seen by many employers as being the most direct way to do this,” a statement released on behalf of the all-party group says.
“As a result, the inquiry will seek to discover whether members of the BME community are being given equal access to the benefits of higher education and whether or not higher education is of equal value in the long term.”
It will be interesting to see how much this piece of work addresses the issues of student success and attainment.
Secondly, a report in the Guardian, questioned why computer science graduates topped the unemployment tables. (I don’t think that is the case at Staffordshire),and proposed that some of the factors were obvious, such as the quality of the degree obtained, location within the UK, and institution of study, but that one other key factor was the employment rates of black and minority ethnic (BME) students:
“BME graduates have higher unemployment rates across all subjects, and even BME computer science students from Russell Group institutions had a 16.7% unemployment rate compared to an average Russell Group unemployment rate of 7.2%. However, we do need to be clear that many of these students come from, and still live in, areas of extremely high unemployment, where a figure of 16.7% would be heralded as a significant success story.
It can and should be argued that any consideration of graduates’ employment needs to be contextualised against their contemporaries, rather than making unrealistic comparisons between institutions that draw from significantly different demographics. Having said that, there is considerable bias in the employment prospects for graduates of BME origin with similar or better qualifications than their white counterparts, which has even resulted in graduates changing or “anglicising” their names to obtain interviews.”
The article also points out that CS , particularly in post-92 universities has contributed significantly to widening participation success, with BME students opting for CS instead of other STEM subjects with “64% of computer science students studying at post-92s (65% of those BME students), as opposed to 13% at Russell Group universities (10% of those BME).”