Research interests and expertise

CRAC’s research team has expertise and capacity in both quantitative survey techniques and qualitative methodologies, having worked with young adults, undergraduates and postgraduates, as well as those now in the workplace and the specialist professional educational workforce. We have a record of devising and deploying online surveys large-scale 

Work experience and graduate employability 

We have particular knowledge and expertise around the development of employability skills and career thinking by graduates and also the work experience schemes open to them. These interests were initiated when CRAC developed its ground-breaking ‘Insight into Management’ careers programmes for HE students, and deepened during collaborative research and development work led by CRAC under EU funding. The latter resulted in the European Framework for Work Experience (EFWE), and the subsequent ‘Experience Works’ programme continues to be delivered within education and voluntary settings. The expertise has been developed in the context of CRAC’s longstanding relationships with employers, universities and their careers services, and HE students. 

STEM careers 

CRAC has long had an interest in enhancing the careers awareness of young people within and emerging from education. Recent and current Governmental policy has focused support for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) qualifications and careers. Since publication of the ‘STEM Programme’ in 2006, in which the (then) DCSF laid out a series of national initiatives to increase the number of number of young people studying STEM qualifications, CRAC has provided expertise to the advisory groups of several national projects, and our research portfolio revealed new insights into the career intentions of STEM students in particular. CRAC’s understanding that STEM qualifications open up a wide spectrum of careers, including many unrelated to STEM subjects, has become mainstream thinking, along with our belief that careers awareness can beneficially be raised through many STEM curriculum enrichment and extra-curricular activities alike.

Impact and evaluation 

CRAC’s decades of development and delivery of careers programmes and career-related learning, as well as workforce support, have resulted in a very practical understanding of careers interventions and support ‘on the ground’. This informs CRAC’s interest and expertise in providing evaluative information and measures of the impact of careers-related learning programmes and careers information provision.