Postdoctoral programmes have recently become an important step leading from doctoral education to permanent academic careers in the social sciences. This paper investigates the effects of a large and structured postdoctoral programme in the social sciences on a number of academic and non-academic outcomes of fellows. Propensity score matching is…

Students' trajectories into university are often uniquely dependent on school qualifications though these alone are limited as predictors of academic potential. This study endorses this, examining associations between school grades, school type, school performance, socio-economic deprivation, neighbourhood participation, sex and academic…

Although mentoring has become increasingly popular within UK higher education, there is little evaluative research. The current longitudinal study aimed to evaluate the usage of a peer mentoring scheme during a first semester at university amongst 124 students. Results indicate that during the first week at university the majority accessed the…

Academic career paths in Europe are heterogeneous, and the chances for early career researchers to become a permanent member of the academic profession differ from country to country. In some countries, the employment prospects are very insecure. It is asked whether contract conditions at universities influence the chance of taking over a mature…

This article explores the factors influencing student choice at six contrasting universities in Scotland to establish if there is value in developing a model for predicting institutional choice for Scottish undergraduate entry. It is based on a survey of 651 students in two undergraduate disciplines, accountancy and engineering, across the six…

A study of the use of employment and unemployment patterns of recent graduates as predictors of a university's graduates' employability found that differences in employment patterns are more a function of the mix of majors among a particular institution's graduates, and that use of these predictors is unstable over time. (MSE)

Results of an annual study of student opinions of courses at the London School of Economics and Political Science (England) show variations in level of satisfaction with a single teacher, even within the same course, according to teaching method. Predictors of these variations are examined, including teacher, course, and student characteristics.…