Over half of Northern Ireland s graduates feel that their skills and talents are underused in Northern Ireland business and industry, and that local employers do not provide mechanisms to develop and enhance graduates skills. In addition, female graduates still tend to earn less than their male counterparts. Those are just some of the disturbing findings from a major study which surveyed over 1400 Northern Ireland graduates, four years after graduation.
Graduates are satisfied or highly satisfied with the skills they have acquired in higher education.
This applies to those who undertook their studies in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. A substantial majority of graduates, however, record a low level of utilisation of these skills and a failure of most of their employers to provide mechanisms for the development or enhancement of those skills. Follow-up detailed telephone interviews with thirty graduates living in Northern Ireland and elsewhere confirmed that few employers have a training policy and that the identification of training needs and their implementation are largely left up to individual employers. Three-quarters of these graduates were employed in SMEs. These employers are more likely not to utilise graduate skills and not to have training policies.