Are Chemistry Degrees Advancing Social Mobility?
The IFS and the Sutton Trust have published a report with subject-level data on social mobility. This is - to my knowledge - the first time this data has been available. For the first time it’s possible to see whether chemistry degrees advance social mobility.
Methodology
The report multiplies two existing (but arduous-to-collate) data points to make a new piece of data.
The first data point is a measure of access to HE: the proportion of students entering a course from a Free School Meals (FSM) background as measured at age 16. The second is a measure of successful progression from HE for those students: the proportion in the top quintile of earners at the age of 30.
There are legitimate criticisms of using these measures: there are types of deprivation which aren’t captured by FSM status, and there are types of success which aren’t recognised by earnings. The age points of 16 and 30 will also miss certain biographies, and it’s worth saying upfront that earnings are likely more sensitive to a graduate’s location than to the academic rigour of their degree. It also seems that the ethical requirement to make the data non-identifying has meant that there are some gaps in the data for institutions with fewer than 6 FSM students. Despite this, the information is worth seeing.
For Chemistry degrees overall, an access rate of 4.89% and a success rate of 28.33% are multiplied (and then divided by 100) to give a mobility rate of 1.39%. As points of reference, current pupil eligibility for free school meals is about 20%, and the proportion of a population in a quintile is 20%. This would give a mobility score of 4% if the statistical representation were preserved through HE and into employment.
How do Chemistry’s numbers compare with the values for other subjects?
Access rate (entrants to HE courses with FSM status at age 16) against success rate (proportion of those students in the top quintile of earners by age 30). Chemistry plotted in magenta.
Mobility rates by subject. Chemistry (1.4%) plotted in magenta. The highest scores are for Pharmacology (4.2%) and Computer Science (2.9%). Median score (horizontal line): 1.1%.
Analysis by subject
Chemistry is perhaps unremarkable by the standards of the sector: fairly average access rates and success rates multiply to give a fairly average mobility rate. There is a question about what kind of absolute values the whole sector should be striving to accomplish (all subject-level scores are low), but the descriptive stats place Chemistry in the middle of the subject-level pack.
The comparison between STEM fields is worth plotting separately. Comparing Chemistry with a narrower field shows it to sit squarely in the middle of STEM subjects.
For STEM subjects, access rate (entrants to HE courses with FSM status at age 16) against success rate (proportion of those students in the top quintile of earners by age 30). Chemistry plotted in magenta.
Mobility rates by subject. Chemistry (1.4%) plotted in magenta. The highest scores are for Pharmacology (4.2%) and Computer Science (2.9%). Median score (horizontal line): 1.4%.
Of particular note are the comparisons with subjects which might be suspected to compete for students with Chemistry degrees (e.g. subjects which might accept students who took a Chemistry A Level). Physics has a poorer access rate but a higher success rate than Chemistry. Pharmacology has much higher access and success rates than Chemistry. The Medicine point is interesting, too: the high earnings of graduates are evident, but so is the poor access to the subject for students with FSM status.
The uncomfortable question here is “at a macro level, should poor kids doing Chemistry at school be advised to do Chemistry degrees?” The answer within this data set is probably no: they should be advised to do Pharmacology. Money is not everything, and it might be that Pharmacology does not match the incomparable thrill of an accredited Chemistry degree, but it is worth considering whether the Chemistry community is satisfied being out-competed on social mobility metrics like this by chemistry-adjacent subjects.
Analysis of Chemistry Degrees by University
The most extraordinary thing about this data set is that it lets you pull apart Chemistry data by institution. The plot of access and success rates for chemistry degrees is worth lingering over.
Access rate against success rate for Chemistry degrees by institution
Mobility rates within Chemistry departments. Median rate (0.9%) represented by a horizontal line.
It needs emphasising again that data for institutions with fewer than 6 FSM students is not public. There are 22 entries for Chemistry in the IFS/Sutton Trust report, but the Guardian League Table lists about 50 Chemistry courses each year. This disparity is huge.
The data shows ranges of about 45% in the success rate and 25% in the access rate. QMUL has the highest access rate, and Northumbria the highest success rate.
Mobility rates show that QMUL (7.2%) and UCL (4.7%) lead the pack, with most other Universities bunching nearer to the median score of 0.9%. It seems likely that the difference between the subject-level median (1.3%) and the median of Chemistry by Department (0.9%) is due to the reporting criteria (i.e. the unreported University-level data increases the aggregated median mobility rate).
Analysis of Chemistry Degrees by University
Within the limitations of these metrics, some Chemistry departments are doing good social mobility work and others are not. Overall, the skew of the data does not have a long tail so much as a long head: some Departments are doing extraordinarily well in these metrics, but most are clustered around much lower outcomes.
Is Chemistry inclusive to students from FSM backgrounds? I wonder if the big conclusion from the data is that the FSM students who do Chemistry can do well in terms of salary outcomes, but also there is much more scope to recruit more students from a FSM background.
At the same time, the outlier values from QMUL and UCL show that it can be done (though there is likely an important London effect in these outcomes). Is this kind of social mobility work something the community should acknowledge or celebrate or advance through a body like the RSC?
Prestige
More speculatively, it may be worth interrogating to what extent the undergraduate trajectory ‘locks in’ certain patterns of social mobility from undergraduate to postgraduate level. It may also be worth considering how, as a profession, we think about the intersection of social mobility and geographical location which seems to lurk behind the ‘levelling up’ soundbite.
For those who want to read more about this report and play with the data in a friendly (Tableau) format, I found the WonkHE piece here very good.
Appendix: League Table Rankings against WP Metrics
I plotted the WP metrics against 2022 Guardian League Table ranking for Chemistry departments, too. They are worth seeing, but didn’t quite fit in the flow of the blog. I have plotted a line of best fit for interest, though the fit is not great.
