06 May 2025

Dear Paul

Thank you for your recent emails to the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) regarding your concerns about the available statistics on graduate outcomes in the UK and for your patience while we reviewed your most recent enquiry. We have considered the information you provided, including your summary of analysis and research on the Graduate Premium, your feedback from other interested parties, and your email interactions with the Department for Education (DfE). Thank you for sharing these with us.

Several of the statistical publications to which you refer fall within OSR’s remit as the independent regulator of official statistics, specifically the LEO Graduate and Postgraduate Outcomes, HESA Graduate Outcomes, and Graduate labour market statistics. OSR conducts periodic reviews of such statistics to ensure they comply with the Code of Practice for Statistics; pertinently, in April 2024, OSR assessed that the HESA Graduate Outcomes statistics met the required standards of accredited official statistics.

One of these publications, the Graduate Labour Market Statistics, makes specific reference to a Graduate Premium, reported as an overall average. Having reviewed the information you provided, I recognise that the current framing of the Graduate Premium has limitations and could potentially be misleading for users, especially when presented in isolation from prior academic attainment.

The Graduate Labour Market Statistics publication already contains a caveat warning against the attribution of overall income outcomes solely to graduate qualifications. However, it is not made clear in the publication that the caveat relates to how users should interpret the Graduate Premium statistic. I understand that DfE has acknowledged that the concept of a Graduate Premium could be misleading at face value. On this basis, we expect the DfE to make changes to the publication to more explicitly link its caveat to the Graduate Premium, and to reflect that the statistic should not be used to compare the outcomes of graduates and non-graduates in isolation from prior academic attainment. We would also expect a more comprehensive and accurate definition of the Graduate Premium to be carried forward to any future official statistics publications which make use of the term.

More broadly, I was pleased to see that the DfE has welcomed and encouraged further feedback from you about these statistics, in line with our expectations of producers around user engagement. We will continue to discuss developments in this area through our regular engagement with DfE. We will also consider the quality and value of these statistics in any future formal reviews, which are undertaken periodically.

I am also aware that you would like the Graduate Labour Market Statistics to be broken down by prior academic attainment. We understand that as this publication uses the Labour Force Survey for which prior academic attainment is not available, and so the producer unfortunately is not currently able to produce statistics broken down in this way. Separately, the LEO Graduate and Postgraduate Outcomes publication does present this breakdown for graduates as well as other disaggregations which influence employment and earning outcomes, although I recognise it does not compare comparative earnings for graduates and non-graduates by prior academic attainment.

Regarding the other statistics you reference, the HESA and LEO publications do not refer to the Graduate Premium and do not compare graduate outcomes with those of non-graduates. Prior academic attainment is also not considered in the statistical analysis. I agree with your assessment that it would therefore be inappropriate to calculate a Graduate Premium based on these statistics alone, and without acknowledging the role of prior academic attainment. As you acknowledge in your own research, however, these statistics do have public value by providing insight into graduate outcomes.

More widely, OSR is not in a position to comment on the public discussion about the financial benefits, or otherwise, of higher education. In reviewing your case we did not find any recent examples of official statistics being misused by government to influence the debate; if you are aware of any, please let us know. Nonetheless, you have highlighted an important issue about how the Graduate Premium is presented by statistics producers and understood by the public, for which I am grateful.

I will share a copy of this letter with the relevant team at the Department for Education.

Thank you for taking the time to contact OSR about this matter.

Yours sincerely  

Ed Humpherson
Director General for OSR

 

05 June 2025

Dear Paul

Thank you for your further emails to the Office for Statistics Regulation regarding your concerns about the available statistics on graduate outcomes and the concept of a ‘graduate premium’.  

Since receiving your initial correspondence, we have continued to engage with the Department for Education (DfE) regarding their work and plans for the statistics concerned, particularly the graduate labour market statistics. We understand that DfE’s work includes both immediate improvements to the publication and inviting public views on the longer-term plans for the statistics.  

The latest release of the graduate labour market statistics, published on 5 June, contains several positive changes based on our recent feedback. In addition to the previously stated caveats around the limitations and use of the statistics, these changes include the explicit linking of those caveats to all sections of the release, where relevant, to remind users how they should interpret the statistics, and again caution them against comparison due to the statistics not controlling for external factors such as prior attainment. DfE have also removed the term ‘graduate premium’ from this release to avoid any direct comparisons in salary between postgraduates, graduates and non-graduates being made.  

The Code of Practice for Statistics sets out clear requirements for producers in relation to the Trustworthiness, Quality and Value of official statistics. In particular, the Code establishes that statistics producers should maintain and refresh their understanding of the use and potential use of the statistics and data. They should consider the ways in which the statistics might be used and the nature of the decisions that are or could be informed by them. To do this effectively, the views of a range of users should be sought and, where practical, addressed. We are pleased to see DfE taking your views on board and we recognise that your requests will need to be balanced against the needs of wider users.  

I have been pleased by DfE’s engagement with us on this matter thus far, and we expect this to continue to be mirrored in the department’s interactions with users. The most recent release of the graduate labour market statistics shares DfE’s plans to further improve these statistics, looking at alternative, more robust sources to better meet user needs which the public are invited to provide feedback on. I encourage you to continue to engage with DfE as this work progresses. 

I will share a copy of this letter with the relevant team at the Department for Education.  

Thank you for contacting OSR about this matter. 

Ed Humpherson
Director General for OSR