Prospectus: 01206 873778Goldsmiths College: Exciting in gritty and grotty part of London

Prospectus: 01206 873778Goldsmiths College: Exciting, in gritty and grotty part of London. Produces some of Britain’s best-known modern artists, including enfant terrible Damien Hirst.Prospectus: 0207 919 7282Greenwich: Ex-poly and the place to be in the year 2000 for our very wonderful millennium celebrations.Prospectus: 0800 005006Hertfordshire: Flagship ex-poly has grown a lot, but kept status in computer science and engineering.Prospectus: 01707 284800Imperial College: For brainy anoraks Tip-top reputation. Plenty of biotechies too.Prospectus: 01603 456161East London: Ex-poly, it’s very East London. Rag trade, kaleidoscopic ethnic mix.Prospectus: 0208 8493425Essex: Once wild Essex now New Labour of universities, having grown respectable and academic. Pioneered two-year degrees.Prospectus: 01280 814080Cambridge: Ancient, elite uni, less worldly than Oxford and better at attracting state school pupils.Prospectus: 01223 333308City: Ex-college of advanced technology, it’s a uni for business and professions. Close links to City.Prospectus: 0207 477 8029Cranfield: Mainly postgraduate.

Undergrads are in agriculture and defence and related studies.Prospectus: 01234 754171East Anglia: Outside Norwich, child of the Sixties Creative writing under Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion. Claims launch of first degrees in financial services, taxation and revenue law.Prospectus: 01202 524111Brighton: Ex-poly. Many courses with strong European focus.Prospectus: 01273 600900Brunel: Strong techno base as an ex-college of advanced technology It has diversified widely. Four sites in west London.Prospectus: 01895 274000Buckingham: UK’s only private uni. Many were still in Norfolk, with most in graduate-level work.. Universities

Anglia Polytechnic: Ex-poly, in spite of name. Sites all over East Anglia; 13,000 students, 60 per cent over 21.

Plans to drop “poly”.
Prospectus: 01245 493131Birkbeck College: The place to go if you missed the boat at 18. Almost all part-time mature students.Prospectus: 0845 601 0174Bournemouth: Ex-poly based in the suave seaside town. And the rest were overseas students going home and others not unavailable for work for health or other reasons. Oxford’s careers service says students increasingly choose to wait until they have a degree before job-hunting – 8 per cent say that six months after graduation they’re in interim jobs.University of East Anglia found 80 per cent of its 1995 graduates were working full-time; 63 had done more training. A further 10 per cent were taking time out, or were overseas students going home, and 6 per cent were working abroad.Oxford has even fewer straight into work – 52.3 per cent with 40.6 in further study: only 1.9 were still seeking work six months later – the lowest for a decade. Cambridge, for example, had 57 per cent of graduates in 1998 in permanent employment six months after graduating; while 27 per cent went into further study. Figures for students in permanent jobs six months after graduation include such temporary work as flipping burgers – and exclude those going back into education.Oxford and Cambridge, which are generally considered to give students a head start when it comes to employment, do not have particularly stellar percentages going straight into work because they take the kind of students who want to add an extra degree to their name.

Because of the expansion in higher education, graduates require further training to get that elusive extra edge.That is why employment rates submitted by unis and colleges to the Higher Education Statistics Agency are not particularly helpful in showing which are good at preparing students for jobs. But increasingly they first study for a further degree to help them find better jobs Britain is going the way of America. First jobs in blue- chip companies pay about pounds 16,000 a year – that’s par for the course, says Jan Stow, who works in Kingston’s careers service. First jobs in small- and medium-sized firms may carry rather lower salaries – pounds 12,000-pounds 14,000 a year.Most graduates tend to stay around and find work in the South-east.