Martin Edmondson, chief executive at Graduate Futures Institute, talks to Micha Smith about rebranding AGCAS, the centrality of careers and employability to institutional success, and the need to shine a positive light on higher education in wider society
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Episode transcript
- Host: Micha Smith, information analyst, Prospects Luminate
- Guest: Martin Edmondson, CEO, Graduate Futures Insitute
00:00:05 Micha Smith
Hello and welcome to the Prospects Luminate podcast, I'm Micha Smith and in this episode I'm joined by Martin Edmondson, chief executive of the Graduate Futures Institute to explore the organisation's recent rebrand and what it means for the future of graduate employability.
In our conversation, Martin talks through the reasons behind the transition from AGCAS to the Graduate Futures Institute, how the sector is changing, and why careers and employability are now central to institutional strategy and student success.
And of course, don't forget to follow the podcast on Spotify or wherever you listen, and email us at editor@luminate.prospects.ac.uk with your feedback.
Today we are joined by Martin Edmondson, CEO of the Graduate Futures Institute. Welcome to the podcast, Martin.
00:00:49 Martin Edmondson
Great to be here. Thanks for having me on.
00:00:51 Micha Smith
No problem. We're really happy to have you here with us today as we dive into the story behind the institute's rebrand, the wider pressure shaping graduate employability in 2026, and the role of Graduate Outcomes data in influencing the future of this sector.
So let's dive right into it. For listeners who may not be familiar, could you start by introducing the Graduate Futures Institute and outlining the transition from AGCAS?
00:01:15 Martin Edmondson
Yeah, I'd be very happy to. So the Graduate Futures Institute is the new name and brand for AGCAS. So AGCAS had been around for about, as a brand and a name, for about the last 60 years, thereabouts, and it stood for the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services. And we have made this move now to the Graduate Futures Institute as of the start of January this year, so it's a new name, a new brand, but very much here to still represent everyone who works in careers and employability in higher education. And I'm happy to give a bit more of a rundown, if it's useful, on sort of why we went from one to the other, if that would be of interest.
00:01:55
So what was the thinking behind creating a brand that is stronger and more recognisable across the sector?
00:02:01 Martin Edmondson
The first piece of thinking came from our members. So I took on the job of CEO just over a year ago and one of the first things we did was conduct something called the Big Conversation, where we held a consultation with our whole membership. And among 1,000 of our members, people who work in every aspect of careers and employability, contributed to that consultation in the first quarter of 2025. And five or six big themes came out of that consultation.
But one of them was that we needed to refresh the brand to fully represent everything that we do in careers and employability in higher education, but also to punch above our weight a little bit more in both higher education as a sector and with government and with society as a whole, and really put on the map the work that everybody in careers and employability does in higher education, both for the good of individual students and graduates, but also how we make a difference to society and the world.
00:02:54 Micha Smith
Would you mind just touching on a few of those themes?
00:02:58 Martin Edmondson
Yeah, I think the key themes were about how do we elevate the amazing work that people do in careers and employability in higher education was one of them. And then perhaps the second was about the concept of sort of the whole university approach to careers and employability, which has evolved over the last couple of decades, really.
And I think if I start with elevating the work we do, I think often the work of careers and employability at HE is underestimated. And it's perhaps also viewed through a lens of, by policymakers, of what careers stuff looked like when they were at university. But actually the incredible work they do now in careers and employability in HE is really varied, really innovative. You've got whole university approaches, you've got teams that work on embedding employability in the curriculum, you've got scaled up work-based learning delivery, you've got careers guidance, you've got placements, you've got amazing work with data, you've got brilliant connectivity with employers, all of these different things going on. And we wanted to make sure that, one of the things that our members told us was that as a community and as a brand and as an organisation, we needed to fully represent all of those people doing all of that work across that full spectrum. So that was sort of part of it.
And then the second, another big theme was this idea of the whole university approach to creating employability and the fact that we had a really amazing quote at our annual conference in the summer last year where we had a speaker called Lisa-Dionne Morris, and one of the things she said was, "it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a whole university to make a student employable." And it was a really powerful way of thinking about the fact that everybody, however small or large their role is, can play a part in helping a student or a graduate be more employable. And career services are the total engine room of that, but also they help enable other people to support that, whether that's academics, whether that's people working in student recruitment, whether that's people working in marketing or estates, all of those roles, as varied as they are, could actually contribute to student/graduate employability. And we wanted to more fully reflect that in our kind of name and brand, but also elevate all of that work.
00:05:11 Micha Smith
Yeah, and I can speak first-hand to the importance of career services, because I leaned heavily on my careers service at MMU when I was transitioning from uni to work. With graduate careers now sitting at the centre of institutional success and risk, how does this rebrand speak to the growing importance of careers and employability in institutional strategy?
00:05:37 Martin Edmondson
Well, it's very, very close to it. So again, I think one of the things, the big trends we've seen that's happened to some extent gradually over the last maybe 10 to 15 years is a shift where careers and employability has gone from being, if you like, a niche support service to being an entirely integral strategic need for a university. If you're, particularly an English university, and we support universities in the UK and Ireland, but English universities in particular, more than a third of their metrics for the whole university are basically careers and employability metrics. So when you add up everything that's in TEF, in the access and participation plans, when you've got Graduate Outcomes within and the B3 markers, when you've got league table data as well, often all of it channelled through Graduate Outcomes data, this makes it a total strategic imperative if you're a leadership team of the university to be placing significant investment, focus and energy into your careers and employability offer.
Now, that's just the metrics argument. I think there's also a really strong moral argument. We hear all of the concern that students have at the moment about fees and that side of things. And a lot of that argument stems from the fact that there is a psychological contract now that's much more explicit than it was before about students investing in coming to university and that we as universities need to deliver on their investment. And a key part of what they see as that investment is both their long-term employability and their immediate access to graduate jobs and so it's up to all of us to deliver on that. Our members are at the heart of that work, but actually, again, it's both the whole university effort and it's something that vice-chancellors, senior leadership teams have to place a focus on now. And so again, our brand positioning as well as the Graduate Futures Institute is trying to get everybody zeroed in on that, the one thing we have in common, which is this idea of shaping futures together and the idea that our common goal, however we might approach it and the different ways we might do it, is helping graduates be super successful from their time in HE.
00:07:49 Micha Smith
And some of the messaging coming out, it emphasised representing a broader community. Who exactly is included in this wider community that you're trying to reach?
00:08:01 Martin Edmondson
I think in the end, it's sort of self-driven by people who feel that they contribute to careers and employability. As I said earlier, careers services remain our bread and butter, our engine room, our core. They're still with the people with whom we're communicating the most, people who are in the heads of careers role or director of employability or whatever it ends up being called in different institutions, are our key point people, both in terms of where we have the deepest relationship. We have a dedicated conference for those people, and we've built some new systems that come with the new brand that help them better understand everybody in their institution is connecting.
But we also, one of the things we've done under the new brand and from the consultation, the big conversation, is develop a new set of values, which stand for, which are called the wild values, which stands for welcome, impact, leadership and dynamic. And the welcome bit of that is really important because that's all about, one of the big messages we got from that big conversation from our members was that people, they wanted us to be an inclusive community and inclusive in a couple of senses. One inclusive in the sense of welcoming in everyone, anyone who contributes to careers and employability. So whether there are a careers adviser, a placement person, a head of careers, an academic, a data person, all of those people are welcome and can contribute. And then similarly, also inclusivity in the sense of equality, diversity and inclusion and making sure that we are really focused on that in all of our work, but also we're thinking about how we as a community can more fully represent the student base that we serve as well.
00:09:44 Micha Smith
Does Graduate Futures Institute basically communicate to universities and employers and policymakers that, you're here to support them in this new journey?
00:09:56 Martin Edmondson
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we're talking to all of those groups. I mean, our prime membership is ultimately, as I say, the people in higher education who are doing this work. So our main job is to equip them, support them, encourage them, enable them to do their job really effectively. So whether that's through training, research, resources, data, intel, conferences, events, you know, we're still going to be doing all of that. We're trying to put a bunch of that on steroids in terms of like really, you know, improving the quality, value, and range and scope of that work. Because again, that was something that our members have asked for. But ultimately, it's about equipping and enabling those people to be really successful. We're building strong partnerships with people like the Institute of Student Employers on the employer side, so that we're building better connectivity with employers and graduate recruiters. And then we're also working really closely with bodies like Universities UK to make sure that we're plugged into vice-chancellors and into HE policymaking. So we're working very closely on thinking about what part we can play in positioning higher education back into a positive place in society because it's, to be honest, it's getting pretty negative vibes at the moment, I think, in a lot of media and we'd really like people to fall back in love with universities again. And we think we can play a part of that because I think one of the core reasons people value universities is about the opportunities it creates for people and life chances it creates for people. And we're at the heart of that.
00:11:30 Micha Smith
Yeah. And how exactly has the landscape changed, like, that's made careers work so central to institutional success?
00:11:39 Martin Edmondson
I think it's come from a number of directions. So partly it's come from policy making, so we've had this cocktail over the last 15 to 20 years of fees, various metrics and things like tech, which have driven a greater focus in this area. But I also think there's just been a growing recognition globally. I was fortunate enough to be in a conference in India last week and India has a very different higher education system to the UK, has an incredibly large scale higher education system, 45 million students. But actually the big thing they're talking about is careers and employability. Now they do it very differently to how we do it in the UK, and the same goes for when you go to the US. They're very focused on careers and employability as well, but they do it very differently as well. So it's not necessarily saying there's a right or wrong answer, but what we are seeing is a really consistent situation where our education needs to place a hugely strong emphasis on how it prepares people for life, for careers, for the world of work, for the changing world of work, and for all the pressures that kind of come with that.
00:12:46 Micha Smith
Yeah, and with TEF and things of that sort, what pressures are institutions facing? Like, what position are they in?
00:12:56 Martin Edmondson
Well, universities as a whole at the moment are financially strained, the most they've been for probably 30 years and certainly in the UK. So it's a tough time right now. One of the things we've been doing is really focusing on how we drive value into the proposition of being a member of the Graduate Futures Institute. So whether that's through new events, new innovations, sensitive pricing, all of that kind of stuff, to reflect the fact that we understand that universities at the moment are facing big financial pressures. But we're coming up again, in theory, to another round of TEF. There's still a bit of movement on exactly what that's going to look like. But again, that's our members, particularly people in senior leadership roles, head of careers, director of employability roles, are going to be at the heart of their university TEF responses. We're going to be playing a part in that. But also one of the new things we're developing as well from the big conversation is a whole university kitemark to effectively, that we want vice-chancellors as well as heads of careers to want, which basically is a standard that a university has a whole university approach and a whole university commitment to careers and employability at a really sort of serious and integrated level. And we hope that actually the input into that will also help people complete their TEF submissions more effectively and really dovetail with that.
00:14:25 Micha Smith
Yeah, and I imagine it's a pretty difficult balancing act, ensuring that graduates do leave universities employable, but also making sure that universities don't lose their essence, like, making sure that they are giving people good learning environments and opening up their eyes to different perspectives.
00:14:45 Martin Edmondson
Yeah, and I think sometimes this is portrayed as a zero-sum game. If you focus on careers and employability, you somehow diminish educational value. I think the best universities that have managed to do both of those things at the same time. And I don't think that's actually impossible at all. I think that's a perfectly feasible goal to be thinking about how you teach, I don't know, a history degree or a physics degree, but also help the student through the teaching of that degree, understand the graduate attributes and skills and capabilities that they're developing that will help them translate into the world of work or whichever direction they want to go in, whether they want to get a job, start a business, volunteer, whatever path holds for their life. But they'll be more effective in that path if they have greater self-knowledge through understanding their capabilities, their attributes. And there are plenty of ways, and plenty of ways our members are helping and working alongside academics to weave those things in together so you don't need to diminish, if you like, what might be seen as core educational value, knowledge, etc., with things like employability and attribute development and career readiness.
00:15:58 Micha Smith
And how does the Institute help universities translate policy pressures into practical employability strategies?
00:16:05 Martin Edmondson
So we do this through a number of ways. We spend a lot of time, particularly with our heads' focus on leadership and also connecting them with key policymakers. So in the last few months, for example, we've had dedicated sessions with our leadership groups, with HESA looking at Graduate Outcomes, with the OFS looking at TEF changes, with the Institute of Employers looking at employer connectivity. So we're constantly joining the dots between those two things. And we're also at the moment, for example, working really closely with Universities UK on their Future Jobs project, which is the first tranche of their University Reputation project in order to make sure that actually we're at the heart of that dialogue conversation and part of the solution as well.
But we've also done some practical things with government policy. So recently, for example, influencing government to change their local skills policy. So there's a thing called LSIPs, which is kind of what shapes a lot of local skills investment work at a local level. And that previously didn't factor in higher education at all and one of the things we got them to write into the new government guidance in the autumn last year was that every LSIP plan, every local skills plan, should be connected with its local university and should be done through the head of careers. So we've been trying to kind of, we've made some, we've had some little wins like that are helping join the dots between the policy landscape and what's going on in our individual universities.
00:17:40 Micha Smith
And looking ahead three to five years, what would you say are the top strategic priorities of the Graduate Futures Institute?
00:17:48 Martin Edmondson
That's a great question. I think at the moment, as I say, we've been really focused on, you know, listening to our members and making this community and organisation be the best version of itself that it can be. And that's been the immediate focus. I think as we look up and look ahead, I think we're really keen to make sure there's ways we can measure and understand and, and clarify our impact, both through things like the level of recognition of the work that our members do by government policymakers, by higher education decision makers, by senior leadership teams. I think having a situation where we're at the forefront of debate when policy is being made, I think also continuing to equip and enable UK and Irish careers services and universities to be at the cutting edge in the world in terms of careers and employability delivery. And we want to be the community and environment in which we harness those discussions, help people be on the front foot in all of that, and create an environment really where ultimately where this is this, you know, this part of the world becomes the best place to come and study for our students and graduates in terms of both amazing education combined with, world-class careers and employability provision.
00:19:15 Micha Smith
How does the Institute view the ongoing debate about the value of degrees and graduate outcomes?
00:19:22 Martin Edmondson
I mean, look, there's a lot of concern, obviously, about things like student loans at the moment and I think some of that debate is healthy and some of that debate is a little bit misinformed at times. But I think I would certainly come back to a piece of work, there's a great piece of work done by David Willets and his organisation last year, which took a really deep look at how you think about the value of a degree and whether it still offers value or not. And almost by every measure, obviously some people will measure degree value by things like salaries, which is a crude measure, but you know, it's one way you can look at it. Now, the graduate premium is actually still holding up. It's smaller than it used to be, partly because minimum wage has been pushed up so much in this country, which, not necessarily because graduate jobs have diminished. So that is a challenge, but actually it's still holding up and it still holds true that actually there's greater value.
But there's also value in terms of things like health, civic engagement and societal input from people who go to university. So there's a massive societal benefit still to having a large proportion of people go to university. And I still really believe in that. I think clearly, you know, we can't be complacent within the world of higher education and we have to keep iterating and we have to keep making our offer relevant, well plugged-in to the world of employment as well. But I still think fundamentally it's a a positive societal goal to have a great proportion of our population go to university and to make that, to equip and make that happen as much as we can.
00:21:05 Micha Smith
Yeah, I actually think that's one of my main frustrations with the debate is hearing the value of a university degree just being boiled on to one or two metrics, usually salaries. And if you had a professional-level job now, then I think it's pretty, looking at it myself, I think it's pretty obvious that university or university education has a lot of positive outcomes outside of that.
00:21:32 Martin Edmondson
No, definitely. I think one of the concerns I have in this space is that I'm now, I was, I do occasionally still go on Twitter or X or whatever we call it. And, you know, I've picked up a few bits of dialogue on there from, you know, posh lawyers called Rupert pulling up the drawbridge on kind of, everybody behind them, if you like, saying that, I think we should go back to 10% of people going to university. Well, we know who that would exclude. That would exclude people who are from more disadvantaged backgrounds who suddenly don't have the chance to go to university and I don't think that's the right answer.
00:22:07 Micha Smith
How can careers teams influence outcomes beyond compliance metrics, do you think?
00:22:13 Martin Edmondson
What do you mean by the compliance mentioned as in beyond, what influence can they have on where students graduates end up going?
00:22:21 Micha Smith
Yes, yes.
00:22:22 Martin Edmondson
Ok, so, I mean, I think there's lots of ways and I think if you, we see some amazing examples of how different universities are approaching this. I mean, I really like what's been going on at somewhere like Teesside University where they have embedded employability through their curriculum, they've embedded digital skills through their curriculum. So they've really looked at an integrated model of great education allied to great provision and employability provision in that kind of context. And what you see there in outcomes terms is that Teesside's graduate outcomes, if you bear in mind that Teesside is not necessarily, I don't know if you've been to Teesside, but it's like, you know, it's not the easiest labour market in the world and, you know, it's not like the City of London or something. And yet their graduate outcomes put them in the top echelons of performance on that, even though their tariff intake of students isn't as high as, for example, a Russell Group university and the environment in which they have to kind of place people in terms of the working environment and the labour market locally is not as strong, and yet they're delivering those incredible results. I think that's a massive tribute to the careers team there to the senior leadership team there who've really made this a totally central, integral goal.
I think there's other universities doing similarly great work in all sorts of different spheres. You look at sort of what Kingston are doing, where they put all of their students through kind of skills measurement tools and through assessment centres in the second year and have integrated employability modules every year. You look at City University in London as well with an employability module in every single course. You look at at Bristol University with the skills programme they have running through their degrees there, you know, we're seeing this as a really fantastic set of integrated approaches that is then tracing through to, you know, both a whole university approach and then, and then, you know, having positive impact on things like graduate outcomes.
00:24:29 Micha Smith
And in this environment, just how central has Graduate Outcomes data become to institutional strategy?
00:24:37 Martin Edmondson
Yeah, it's incredibly central. It's now, as I said earlier, like we're looking at sort of around a third of the metrics, particularly for an English university, are basically built on Graduate Outcomes and effectively careers and employability metrics. It's clearly not the only metric that matters, but it is a significant one. It's still the biggest annual social survey that's done in the UK every year. And it has some flaws, we all definitely know that, but it also is a really robust bit of data as well. So it's something I think that whilst it, it's perhaps a bit of a double-edged sword for I think a lot of people who work in careers space, you know, people at times find it creates pressure and sometimes it is hard to influence, but also it very much drives the focus on, it necessitates a strategic level of investment and focus in a university on this area of work. And I think that's really important.
00:25:37 Micha Smith
You've previously said that Graduate Outcomes has helped shift careers and employability from the periphery to the core of institutional performance. How are careers professionals adjusting to this? Are they feeling more pressure due to this increased responsibility or is that increased pressure, energising career services.
00:26:00 Martin Edmondson
I think there was a really, well, it was a really, really interesting bit, I co-presented at the NAGCAS conference, which is our Australian sister organisation in December. Sadly, I did it from my kitchen in York, not in Sydney itself. But I was, we were comparing, we run their survey, if you like, that surveys careers professionals in Australia, and obviously we we run on our own one as well. And so we were doing a bit of compare and contrast. Perhaps the most interesting comparison within all the data was the fact that Australian heads of careers felt under less pressure, but they also felt that they had less influence, whereas UK heads of careers felt that they were under greater pressure, but they had more influence. And I think that really neatly summarizes up the equation. And obviously, different individual people will view that differently. So some people would, some people in our community will be feeling the pressure but enjoying it and thinking and energised by that because actually they've got this chance to shape strategy in their institution because this is so central. You know, others might be feeling that pressure and be finding that really tough.
Now, our job is to support them either way and we're building a bunch of leadership resources to equip and support those people, whichever way. And our leadership conference in January was very much focused on a lot of that as well. But I think that quite neatly summarises the fact that that double-edged sword point that it is super central, which is, I think, a positive in a lot of ways. But I think we also have to accept that with that comes scrutiny, pressure, accountability, which, adds an extra challenge to leadership in this space.
00:27:41 Micha Smith
And before we close out, if you could just give one brief message to higher education leaders about the future of graduate employability, what would it be?
00:27:51 Martin Edmondson
I think my key message would be that the student expectation of higher education is now centrally rooted and psychologically rooted in a connection with how it gives them better opportunity for their future and for their life, particularly in terms of their work and their career. And therefore, the single most important thing we can currently invest in and focus on within higher education at the moment is ensuring that the way we design and deliver our higher education in all of its different forms places that at the centre of what we do.
00:28:23 Micha Smith
And how can listeners engage with the Graduate Futures Institute and stay informed?
00:28:30 Martin Edmondson
So one of the things we've launched as part of the new brand is a new blog. So on graduatefutures.org, people can check in on there and you keep up with our blog. We've also opened up our newsletter as well, our Fast Track newsletter, so that if people want to stay connected, they can sign up to that as well. So I'd really encourage people to do that if they want to stay in touch with what we're doing. And we also are running our annual conference at the start of July in Nottingham, which is going to be a really exciting event bringing together. It's the largest event of its kind in the UK each year with bringing together people who work on careers and employability. So anyone who's interested in that should come and join us in Nottingham.
00:29:11 Micha Smith
Well, Martin, thank you. It's been a pleasure having you with us today.
00:29:15 Martin Edmondson
Thank you so much. Thank you for your time. It's been really great to talk to you. Thanks, Micha.
00:29:19 Micha Smith
All right, and thanks to everyone for listening. If you want to learn more about the Graduate Futures Institute and the themes we discussed, do check out the latest updates. We'll be back with another episode very soon. Take care and goodbye for now.
Note on transcript
This transcript was created using a combination of automated software and human transcribers. The audio version is definitive and should be checked before quoting.
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