Salary data from tax records showing exactly how much university leavers are earning is set to be integrated into the UK¡¯s main survey on graduate destinations by 2020.

The new version of the Destinations of Leavers from ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ survey ¨C which in a change to current practice will also look at graduate outcomes 15 months after students leave university rather than the current six months ¨C will include linked salary data from the UK¡¯s tax body, HM Revenue and Customs.

Using data from tax records to show graduate salaries has already been mooted by the government as part of other projects, most controversially as a measure in the teaching excellence framework (TEF).

The DLHE, which is run by the ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ Statistics Agency, will use the same tax data that are already being produced for the Department for Education¡¯s Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) project. An experimental first release from LEO last year highlighted the wide variation in earnings for law graduates from different English universities.

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Details of how the LEO data will be incorporated into Hesa¡¯s DLHE published survey results, starting?in 2020, were outlined on 6 March in a consultation on the final proposals.

Hesa says in its report that ¡°individualised salaries can be derived from data held by the HMRC. Utilising an anonymised process, this data can be linked or matched to Hesa data with a very high success rate.¡±

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The tax record data will be supplemented by optional questions in the survey about salary ¨C mainly to capture information from those working overseas ¨C but Hesa says LEO will become the ¡°principal source of published information on graduate earnings data¡± in the new DLHE.

Universities have expressed concerns in the past about using the immediate salaries of graduates in some fields ¨C such as arts courses ¨C as a measure of how well a course has prepared them for a future career.

Perhaps to address this, Hesa¡¯s proposals for the DLHE also outline plans to include new questions in the survey that aim ¡°to capture alternative measures of success¡±.

¡°Graduates will be asked about the meaningfulness of their activity, how their skills are being used, and about their progress towards future goals,¡± a Hesa spokesman said.?¡°The survey will also gather information on graduates developing creative portfolios, starting their own businesses or pursuing other non-traditional career paths.¡±

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The DLHE¡¯s current practice of surveying graduates just six months after leaving university has repeatedly prompted questions about the usefulness of such data, although a longer form of the existing DLHE does survey a smaller sample of the same graduates three years later.

Hesa proposes to move towards a single survey of graduates after 15 months, a compromise between strong preferences expressed in its original consultation for a survey at either 12 months or 18 months after graduation.

Dan Cook, Hesa¡¯s head of data policy and development, said that moving the DLHE to a 15-month time frame might mean that it is more comparable with other countries¡¯ measures of graduate outcomes, although this was not a ¡°direct aim¡± of its review.

¡°The crucial factor in selecting 15 months is to obtain the most useful information about transitions into the labour market following graduation, while retaining a sufficiently high response rate,¡± he said. ¡°That the¡­model is more comparable with international surveys is an additional benefit that our model delivers.¡±

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simon.baker@tesglobal.com