Reading: Yes / No / Not Given: Question 3

Several influential university league tables now weight a single figure heavily in their formulas: the median salary earned by graduates within a fixed period after leaving, typically two or three years. Newspapers report these rankings uncritically, prospective students consult them when choosing where to apply, and a number of governments have begun tying a portion of institutional funding to graduate earnings data. I regard this trend as a serious misjudgement of what a university education is meant to accomplish, though I readily concede that graduate earnings are not an irrelevant statistic. A degree that leaves its holders unable to find stable employment at all is a legitimate cause for concern, and no defender of higher education should dismiss that concern out of hand.

My objection is to treating early-career salary as a proxy for educational quality more broadly. Salary a few years after graduation is shaped overwhelmingly by the industry a graduate happens to enter, the regional labour market they enter it in, and their socioeconomic starting point, none of which the university itself controls to any meaningful degree. A graduate who becomes a schoolteacher, a social worker or a research scientist in a modestly paid field is not obviously less well-educated than a classmate who becomes a management consultant, yet salary-weighted rankings systematically penalise institutions that produce more of the former and reward those that produce more of the latter. Over time, I believe this creates a perverse incentive for universities to steer students, whether through admissions choices or subtle changes in course offerings, toward degrees that reliably feed high-paying sectors, narrowing the range of subjects on offer in ways that have nothing to do with teaching quality.

Some ranking bodies have responded by introducing a "value-added" salary measure, comparing graduates' earnings against a statistical prediction based on their entry qualifications and background. This is, in my view, a genuine improvement over a raw salary figure, since it at least attempts to isolate the university's own contribution rather than crediting it for the advantages a student already possessed on arrival. Even so, I remain unconvinced that any salary-based metric, however carefully adjusted, should occupy the prominent position it currently holds in how the public judges a university's worth.

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer? Write YES, NO or NOT GIVEN.

1. The writer believes graduate earnings data is entirely irrelevant to judging higher education.
2. The writer thinks salary a few years after graduation is largely determined by the university's own teaching quality.
3. The writer believes a graduate who becomes a schoolteacher is necessarily less well-educated than one who becomes a management consultant.
4. The writer argues that salary-weighted rankings may create an incentive for universities to steer students toward high-paying fields regardless of teaching quality.
5. The writer regards "value-added" salary measures as a genuine improvement over raw salary figures.
6. The writer believes value-added salary measures should now be given the most prominent role in judging a university's worth.
7. The writer specifies which country first introduced government funding tied to graduate salary data.