Letter: Holes in job survey (2)

There must be room for argument about whether employment after six months is the most meaningful test of employability. But even if it is, what stands out most from the figures published is the huge variation between higher education institutions in the response rates they get to their employment surveys.

Since this is likely to reflect equally large variations in the way the responses are interpreted and converted into statistics, I doubt if we know very much about the real differences (if any) between institutions as producers of employable graduates.

Tim Reuter
Head of history department
University of Southampton