The relationship between age and first destination employment for UK graduates: are mature students disadvantaged?

This article analyses a recent cohort (2006) of UK graduates, and explores the previously neglected relationship between age and post‐degree employment. Much work on mature students assumes their overall experience to be one of disadvantage relative to traditional‐age graduates, and this includes employability research. Here, mature students are demonstrated to be advantaged in the graduate labour market through analysis of a wide range of variables and employment success measures, utilised to produce a detailed set of findings that augment previous understanding. Mature graduates, regardless of whether they studied part‐ or full‐time, secured paid work, graduate‐level work, and a higher salary more frequently. Key mediating factors in their success include being a woman science student and having a history of previous employment with their post‐degree employer. The relative employment success of mature students could not, however, be explained simply as a result of them already being in pre‐degree graduate‐level jobs.