Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the sectoral breakdown of employment of international students who have stayed in the UK post-study in each of the last 10 years by (1) nationality, and (2) sector of employment.

The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) collects and publishes data on the outcomes of graduates 15 months after qualifying from higher education in the Graduate Outcomes (GO) survey. This survey is unique in that it collects detailed information from the individual about their employment or further study, which allows HESA to determine the industry and occupation of employment. Further information about the survey is available here: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/graduates.

The survey results include information on the outcomes of graduates who were domiciled overseas prior to study. For those remaining in the UK, the industry and occupation of employment is available in the GO Open Data here: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/graduates/table-19 and https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/graduates/table-22.

Information is available for graduates in academic years 2017/18 and 2018/19. Counts in the tables are of survey respondents rather than all members of graduating cohorts. In 2018/19, the response rate, including partial survey responses, was 51% and 34% for EU and non-EU domiciled graduates respectively. Further statistics can be found here: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/sb260/figure-3. Breakdowns by country of nationality are not published.

Prior to 2017/18, HESA collected data on the outcomes of graduates 6 months after qualifying from higher education in the Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education survey. Data from this survey series are available in HESA’s publication archive, found here: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/publications#destinations-leavers-higher-education.

Though non-EU international graduates were invited to take part in the survey, the level of response was not considered suitable for publication.