Funding chiefs look at employability indicator

Funding chiefs - under pressure from education secretary David Blunkett to produce an indicator of graduate employability - are leaning towards a complex definition of it.

"To have any validity, indicators of employability need to be multi-dimensional and to distinguish between factors relevant to obtaining a job and factors relevant to preparation for work," stated a report on graduate employment published this week by the Higher Education Funding Council for England.

The first employability indicators will be based solely on the first destinations survey of graduates and will be published in March 2001.