RGCC - The Recruiters’ Guide to Courses & Campuses

The RGCC was created as a guide for employers which would help them to target campus recruitment activity more accurately and gain a clearer understanding of the graduate marketplace. It is based on over 20 million pieces of raw data supplied by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA).

The research covers 20 different subject areas across 125 universities. Data includes: A-level entry grades and degree classification broken down for each university and each course by gender, ethnicity, disability, age, socio-economic background and region.

Leading employers are using the research to help target their activity to the most appropriate universities and courses saving time and money.

Self respecting graduate recruiters understand the real value of knowing their market. The RGCC is an excellent piece of research, endorsed by the AGR, and a valuable addition to any recruiters' tool kit.” Carl Gilleard “The RGCC has become the hottest research for recruiters to get their hands on each year, as without judgement and with great clarity, it gives us the hard facts about the size of the UK graduate pool. Long may it continue” – James Darley, Director of Graduate Recruitment, Teach First

“The single most useful piece of research I have seen in all my time in graduate recruitment.” AGR Board Member. “I found the RGCC Master Class on 29th May 2009 extremely insightful. It was particularly beneficial to be able to discuss the findings with graduate recruiters both in the legal industry and other sectors. It was also very useful to hear the perspective of a CAS representative from an ethnically diverse, non-Russell Group university, and gain a greater awareness of the challenges they face”. Sophie Biney, Graduate Recruitment, Simmons-Simmons.

The data in this report has been fully updated to include students who entered university in September 2007; most of whom will be graduating in 2010. In that sense the report gives an advance preview of next summer’s graduates. It also covers recent graduates – the class of 2008. The Recruiters’ Guide to Courses and Campuses (RGCC) is now in its fifth year. Each year we expand the scope of the research by using a wider range of data and by being able to draw clearer conclusions from the large base of historical data that we now have.

This year we have added a number of new data fields to provide recruiters with our deepest ever level of analysis.

We have a complete breakdown of the 140 countries from which students come to study in the UK.

We were able to add a number of new fields this year to look at three competing influences: socio-economic background, independent vs. State school and level of parental education.

In addition we expanded our diversity research to encompass students with disabilities.

One final element took a look at ‘neighbourhood university effect’; in other words, to what extent does geographical distance from home influence a student’s choice of university?

As ever we hope to produce a guide that stimulates debate as well as proving of practical use to employers in understanding how best to approach the graduate market.