THE DAYS when students regarded university as an opportunity to postpone thinking about a job are lost in the hazy mists of middle-aged memory. Today’s generation of teenagers, faced with the certainty of heavy debts to get their degrees, must be far more hard-nosed in their approach.

With the cap on tuition fees due to be lifted in 2006 — and increasing evidence that most universities will rush to levy the new maximum charge of £3,000 a year — they want to be sure that they will stand a good chance of clearing those debts. Graduate career prospects are now a central element in their choice of a university. That is why The Times Good University Guide includes a calculation of graduate employment rates for individual institutions. The rating distinguishes those who are in “graduate-type” jobs from those who are not: that is, they are working in positions six months after leaving university that require or expect degrees, based on the average level of qualifications held by employees in those occupations.

Ranking universities by this measure alone produces an intriguing top ten: Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen is second, sandwiched between Cambridge and Imperial College London, while Aston noses Oxford out of fourth place. City University is sixth, followed by Bradford, which is 47th in the overall table but ranks above Durham, Surrey and Warwick in the top ten for employment.

The “graduate” category includes traditional professions such as doctors, lawyers, engineers and teachers, as well as high-level managerial and technical occupations. Jobs that have come to be seen as graduate occupations, such as high-level sales, skilled clerical and lower-level company management, are also included, as are the numbers who go on to postgraduate study.

Students choosing their universities know they must balance the attractions of particular locations against the potential appeal to employers of the subjects that interest them. An examination of graduate employment rates by subject illustrates how varied those prospects can be.

Architects, civil engineers and graduates from the medical professions predictably have a better than 90 per cent chance either of being employed in their chosen field or engaged in further study. But a quarter of mechanical, aeronautical or general engineering graduates are likely to be either unemployed or in work that is unrelated to their professional skills. The same is true for a third of electrical or electronic engineers.

Further evidence that computing has yet to recover from the dot-com crash is found in employment rates for computer science, where a third of graduates are either jobless or not in graduate-level work or further study six months after leaving university.

Overall, this year’s graduate “destinations” column shows a mild decline for most of the leading universities in the proportions of graduates finding good jobs. The London School of Economics (LSE) drops from 85.5 per cent last year to 75.3 per cent now. Twelve of the top 20 universities record lower graduate employment rates than last time.

This may be a blip or early evidence of what some academics have predicted will be a “graduate glut” depressing job prospects and financial rewards as higher education expands towards the Government’s target of a 50 per cent participation rate for young people by 2010. Further food for thought for teenagers who can expect to graduate with debts of about £21,000 once tuition fees rise.

A recent survey of nearly 16,000 final-year students underlined the sense of campus gloom in the Class of 2004. The annual UK Graduate Careers Survey found that only 35 per cent expected to enter the graduate job market this year, the lowest figure for a decade. Two-thirds believed that there were not enough graduate jobs and a record 26 per cent were planning to stay on for postgraduate study rather than look for work.

Salary expectations varied widely, too. Finalists at Imperial College, the LSE and Oxford expect to start on at least £23,000 a year, while those at Cardiff, Newcastle and Sheffield believe they will earn less than £17,500.

Not all universities are happy with the graduate destinations rating, based on work by the Institute of Employment Research at Warwick University using data collected by the Higher Education Statistics Agency. Some say the information is not sufficiently robust to judge their success in the employment market.

However, the researchers found that there was a strong link between what graduates were doing six months after university and the work they were likely to be in over the subsequent three years.

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