UCAS launches a new skills development guide

Two new features have been added to the UCAS website to help students when researching their higher education options. Students searching for courses can now access Student Employability Profiles (SEPs) and the overall satisfaction ratings from the National Student Survey for each subject grouping that that they view.

SEPs identify the set of work-related skills that undergraduate students should develop during their courses. The profiles, which were first published as a Guide for Higher Education Practitioners in 2005 and as a Guide for Employers a year later, are now available for students in an accessible format.

The 57 SEPs cover discipline profiles across the 24 Higher Education Academy Subject Centres. They provide a broad introduction to the discipline-related skills with links to the practical, technical and personal skills that should be developed, together with indicators that demonstrate what is required to reach the level of skill.

Not only do they help students to plan their own skills development within higher education, the profiles can assist graduates to structure their applications for employment and plan for interviews more effectively.

As well as links from Course Search, all of the profiles can be viewed at www.ucas.com/seps.

Anthony McClaran, Chief Executive of UCAS, said: 'Increasingly, students and their advisers are demanding more detail about the expected outcomes of studying for a degree. As there is wealth of information already available, I am delighted that students can now access these profiles via ucas.com - one of the most heavily used education websites in the UK.'

Richard Brown, Chief Executive of the Council for Industry and Higher Education (CIHE), said: 'We have developed these profiles in partnership with higher education as we wanted employers to be better informed on the capabilities they can expect in graduates and so recruit from a wider range of disciplines. Now thanks to UCAS, students and those who advise them can also be better informed on what they can expect when they study a wide range of subjects. We hope the profiles will help students make better decisions on what to study.'

Advice on how to use the profiles has also been included on the UCAS website to help students and their advisers to identify competencies and measure a student's skills against each subject profile.

The profiles have been developed from the QAA Subject Benchmark Statements in consultation with Higher Education Academy Subject Centres. The skills have been mapped against input from the Council for Industry and Higher Education (CIHE) Employer membership regarding the employability skills, competencies and attributes which they valued when recruiting. The partnership project has also been supported by Graduate Prospects.

Unistats link

As part of the same development, the UCAS website now displays information from the National Student Survey. The information displayed will be the result of the answer to 'Overall, I am satisfied with the quality of my course' (question 22), for the subject area(s) that the course sits within. This development is a result of UCAS' work with the Higher Education Funding Council for England on the Teaching Quality Information website project, which is now contained within the Unistats.com website to which there are links from the UCAS Course Search. The last stage of this development will be achieved early next year, with the inclusion of an 'intelligent link' which will take the user to the relevant part of the Unistats website, depending on the subject that they were looking at on UCAS Course Search.

Media contacts

Chris Dry, Head of Communications
Telephone: 01242 544677
Email: communications@ucas.ac.uk
Out of hours: 07768 740 461

Notes to editors

  • UCAS is the organisation responsible for managing applications to full-time UK higher education courses.
  • The UCAS website receives more than 74 million page impressions created by 1.4 million unique users in it's busiest month of November.
  • The Higher Education Academy (www.heacademy.ac.uk) works with universities and colleges, discipline groups, individual staff and organisations to help them deliver the best possible learning experience for students.
  • The Student Employability Profiles project was undertaken by Bianca Kubler and Peter Forbes, of Employability Works.
  • Funding support for this phase of the project includes contributions support from the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS), the Department of Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and (AGR) and Graduate Prospects for which we are grateful.
  • For a list of further acknowledgments, please follow the link: www.ucas.com/seps/acknowledgments.html.