Destination of Leavers from Higher Education survey
The Destination of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey collects information on what leavers from higher education programmes are doing six months after qualifying from their HE course (employed, engaged in further study and so on).
The DLHE survey has been used in higher education institutions (HEIs) in its current form since 2002-03. It was known previously as the First Destination Survey. Individual HEIs administer their own surveys, using materials provided by the Higher Education Statistics Agency.
Further education colleges
Students studying on courses in further education colleges (FECs), which are franchised from HEIs, are already included in the DLHE survey. But the survey will now include directly funded HE students at FECs. These results will form part of FECs' Teaching Quality Information datasets on the Unistats web-site from 2010.
By including these students, we aim to gain a more complete picture and gather valuable information that can be used for research purposes. We expect to be able to share the data with FECs to help them understand the destinations of their leavers better.
A survey agency will run the DLHE centrally for FECs. This is because there are relatively small numbers of students studying directly funded HE courses in FECs, and it would be overly burdensome for colleges to run the DLHE. As with the HEI surveys, the agency will use the same questions to ensure direct data comparison. HEFCE has appointed IFF Research to undertake this work. IFF will be working with FECs during 2008-09 to collect student contact details and carry out the first survey.
Further information
More detail about the DLHE survey for directly funded HE in FECs, including the action that colleges need to take, is in HEFCE Circular letter 25/2008.
Further information is available from:
HEFCE - Rachael Tooth, tel 0117 931 7410, e-mail r.tooth@hefce.ac.uk.
IFF Research - Steve Close, tel 020 7250 3035, e-mail stevec@IFFResearch.com.
Last updated 9 October 2009