Journal article
Employment and further study outcomes for care-experienced graduates in the UK
- Abstract:
- Life outcomes for people who spent time in the care of the state as children ('care-experienced') are known to be significantly lower, on average, than for the general population. The reasons for this are complex and multidimensional, relating to social upheaval, disrupted schooling, mental and physical health issues and societal stigmatisation. Previous studies across several countries have demonstrated that they are significantly less likely to participate in higher education and more likely to withdraw early. However, little is currently known about their outcomes after graduation. This paper therefore explores the initial outcomes for the 1,010 full-time students identified as care-experienced within the cohort graduating from an undergraduate degree programme in the UK in 2016/17-the most recent year for which data are available. They were found to be slightly more likely to be unemployed and less likely to be in work (and particularly professional work) than their peers, but, conversely, more likely to be studying. These differences largely disappeared once background educational and demographic factors were controlled. The paper discusses the relationship between care-experience and other sites of inequality, concluding that care-experienced graduates are crucially over-represented in groups that are disadvantaged in the graduate labour market-e.g. by ethnicity, disability or educational history. This intersectional inequality largely explains their lower graduate outcomes. While there are important limitations with the data available, this speaks for the transformational potential of higher education in enabling care-experienced graduates to transcend childhood adversity. Recommendations for national policy and local practices conclude the paper.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, 790.5KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1007/s10734-020-00660-w
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer
- Journal:
- Higher Education More from this journal
- Volume:
- 83
- Issue:
- 2
- Pages:
- 357 - 378
- Publication date:
- 2020-12-20
- Acceptance date:
- 2020-11-17
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1573-174X
- ISSN:
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0018-1560
- Pmid:
-
33362292
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
1151505
- Local pid:
-
pubs:1151505
- Deposit date:
-
2021-01-13
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Harrison et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2021
- Rights statement:
- ©2021 The Author(s).
- Notes:
- Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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