Burman Bulletin: Week of 7 July

This week: The graduate jobs puzzle nobody's quite solved

Here's a stat worth sitting with: 87% of employers reckon graduates come out with the skills they need, yet 47% of them are still struggling to fill graduate-level vacancies. That's not a talent problem. That's a matching problem, and it's the kind of thing HE professional services teams are increasingly on the hook for solving.

The findings come from a new Universities UK report, and they land right in the middle of a wider conversation the sector's been having all year about graduate outcomes. Full-time employment for new graduates has dipped again, down to 59% for the most recent cohort. Meanwhile, HEPI's been publishing pieces arguing the "get a degree, get a job" promise is fraying, and that universities need to build more real-world experience into courses rather than bolting it on afterwards.

So what's actually going on? A bit of everything, probably. Entry-level job ads asking for five years' experience. Employers who say they want graduates but structure their hiring processes in ways that filter most of them out. And a system where careers services, employability teams and student support staff are expected to bridge a gap that's really a labour market issue dressed up as an education one.

If you work in careers, employability, or student services, this is your world right now, and it's only getting busier. More students needing intervention earlier, more pressure to prove "impact," more employers wanting bespoke pipelines rather than generic graduate schemes. It's not a bad time to be building experience in this space if you're thinking about where your PS career goes next.

Worth a skim if you've got five minutes: the UUK employer survey, and HEPI's recent piece on the graduate jobs crisis. Both are short, both are blunt, and both suggest this isn't going away soon.