DO YOU RELY ON THE 2:1?

With degree grade inflation hitting the headlines, employers are struggling to find ways to fairly and accurately assess graduate talent. Here, Carl Gilleard from AGR - the voice of graduate recruiters - explains a new way ahead for our guest post.

Three quarters of AGR members use the 2:1 degree classification as a screening tool. Hardly any recruiters resist using the degree classification at all in the recruitment process.

With such wide usage of the degree class, you’d expect that employers had total confidence in the way that degree classifications are allocated. Yet, in my experience, employers are not always that well informed on how the degree class is arrived at. Using the degree class as a screening tool, suggests that employers think of it as a national standard that can be used to compare one candidate against another. It’s not, and a quick look at the proportions of students who receive firsts and upper seconds from different courses and institutions proves the point.

At best, the degree class is a blunt instrument to use in selection, at worst it can rule out perfectly good (and able) candidates from obtaining a graduate level job. I sympathise with recruiters faced with scores of applicants chasing each vacancy. It’s a tough challenge in these straitened times but rigid use of the degree class can adversely impact on other business goals such as improving the diversity of the workforce.

When employers are asked what they look for in graduate recruits they place relevant work experience, life and work skills and attitudes as being important factors in determining success. The 2:1 clearly does not provide any insight into these important factors. But help is at hand.
AGR has consistently supported the introduction of the Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR) and now that more than eighty institutions have signed up to it, it will not be long before graduate job seekers ask employers to take their HEAR into account.

The HEAR has the potential to change graduate recruitment for the better. It is intended to give a broader and more balanced picture of a graduate’s achievements, including a full transcript of results for all modules, and a record of extra-curricular activity such as the students union, societies, sports clubs, prizes and skills awards. The very things that most employers want to know about the achievements of graduate job candidates; more than that the information contained in a HEAR is verifiable.

Employers often have to rely on the candidate’s own prediction of the degree class they will obtain; a prediction that is invariably optimistic and with good cause. To state that you hope to obtain a 2:2 will mean disqualification from many graduate level job vacancies. The HEAR will allow employers access to achievements before the course is completed so it can be used even when selecting interns.

The HEAR is not replacing the degree classification, at least not in the short-term, but I am optimistic that if employers are prepared to give the HEAR a chance to prove itself against a classification system that is widely regarded as no longer fit for purpose, they will discover lots of benefits, one such being that students might become less fixated on obtaining the ubiquitous 2:1. That has got to be a good thing. A university education is greater than the sum of its parts: not just a series of course options but a challenge to think about the connections between these elements; not merely a chance to make friends for life, but an opportunity to work alongside peers in teams that thrive on diversity; a time for indulging one’s thirst for knowledge and preparing for a fulfilling career. The more that the 2:1 becomes the ‘gold standard’ the less likely that the student experience will be truly enriching.