The numbers used on these pages are for full-time UK first-degree undergraduate students. They do not include postgraduates, international students, or those taking a second or subsequent degree. Joint honours students may be split between two subject areas (eg counted as half a student in one subject, half in another), but in these charts, the numbers are rounded to the nearest whole number.

‘Employability’ is defined as “the proportion of UK domiciled, full-time, first degree graduates who say they are working or studying (or both) as a percentage of all those who are working, studying, about to start work or seeking work.”

This is a national definition used by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). It is not always the same as the percentage of all graduates studying and/or working in the destinations data, because graduates who are neither seeking work nor currently working/studying (eg any who are travelling) are not counted as part of the population for the purpose of calculating employability figures.

The ‘graduate employability’ statistic mirrors the ‘Graduate Prospects’ measure as defined by The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide. It is defined as “the proportion of UK domiciled, full-time, first degree graduates who say they entered professional employment or graduate-level further study as a percentage of all those who are working, studying, or seeking work.”

The population is not quite the same as ‘employability’ because graduates who are due to start a job within a month are considered ‘unemployed’ in the employability calculation, but are excluded from the graduate employability calculation. You can therefore sometimes get a higher percentage rate for ‘graduate employability’ than for ‘employability’.