To ask the Scottish Executive how many university graduates, within a year of graduation, (a) took up employment in Scotland or (b) took up a post related to their field of study, in each of the last three years for which information is available.
(a) Information on destinations of qualifiers, six months after completing their course, is collected from the survey of Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) which is co-ordinated by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) and administered by each higher education institution (HEI).
Of those who responded to the survey 20,355 graduates from Scottish universities (including Scottish domiciled students from Open University), who graduated in the academic year 2006-07, took up employment in Scotland within six months of graduating. The corresponding figures for those graduating in 2005-06 and 2004-05 are 19,910 and 19,520 respectively.
HESA reports overall response rates for the surveys of; 76%, 75% and 75% for 2004-05, 2005-06 and 2006-07 respectively.
The above figures have been rounded to the nearest five for data protection purposes.
(b) This information is not held centrally.