English regulator will poll students to measure value for money

We already have repeated studies showing that higher education contributes far more than is spent on it in therms of the national economy. The least report from 2017 showed that in 2014–15, HE supported almost one million jobs, and contributed £21.5 billion to UK gross domestic product.​ In terms of "value for money" from the graduates' point of view, that is important, but they should be polled about 10 years on and also asked about "value for life". For instance, many of our environmental science students are not that focused on how much money they will make, but what kind of difference they feel they will make in the world. Disregarding this for a crass focus on "earnings" devalues what HE is all about and the OfS should be ashamed. But even in terms of earnings, we already have the 'Absolute Returns' report from 2018 conducted independently by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and looking at earnings data up to the age of 29. The data shows that female and male graduates are earning 28% and 8% more on average than their counterparts who opted for a different route of study after leaving school and since graduates’ earnings rise more quickly during their early and mid-careers, particularly for men, it is expected that returns will increase further once looked at over a lifetime. Why ask for opinions when we have hard data? Why duplicate studies that have been done time and again and waste more time and money?

'Punishing' universities based on graduate earning is a nonsensical idea. This approach assumes that the programme of study is the only significant factor that is worthy of consideration for graduate earnings. Alot of other non-HE factors also play a significant role and these include but are not limited to (i) graduate responsibility, motivation, and career aspirations (graduates do remain unemployed or employed in non-degree jobs by choice/poor decision making/low career aspirations), (ii) job stability, (iii) changing job markets, and (iv) confusing job satisfaction with income (every economist will tell you that job satisfaction is inversely related to earnings - jobs that are more satisfying to do often have more people willing to do them and hence lower the job earning). Is OfS trying to imply that people seeking satisfying occupations is less important than seeking a high paying one??

Seems to be a simplistic view of measurement. Would need to adjust for geography, industry, etc. to get a true picture. Also, likely does not get at the root causes for under-employed graduates. As a wise man once told me, "You don't fatten the pig by weighing it."