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14 Skills required by new chemistry graduates and their development in degree programmes Chemical terminology Fundamental chemical principles Principles of thermodynamics Kinetics of chemical change Inorganic compounds and reactions Organic compounds and reactions Analytical techniques Safe handling of chemical materials Manipulative practical skills Skills with chemical instrumentation Planning and design of experiments Interpretation of experimental data Numeracy and computational skills Report writing skills Oral presentation skills Information retrieval skills Problemsolving skills Teamworking skills Time management/organisational Independent learning ability 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 % Figure 6: Percentage of graduates undertaking PhDs selecting ‘Useful/Very useful’ according to whether their activities since graduation involved a knowledge of chemistry ‘To some extent/Not at all’ or to a ‘Large/Very large extent’. Note that the scale in this case runs from 0 to 100% rather than 30 to 100%, as in the other figures. Not surprisingly, those graduates whose employment required little or no knowledge of chemistry gave relatively low scores for the chemical knowledge/skills. It is seen that the generic skills (other than experimental skills) are given similar high scores by both groups, indicating again the relative importance of these skills, even for graduates in employment which has a high chemistry content. seen to have a high level of usefulness, although team-working skills are marked rather lower than others, perhaps indicative of the individual nature of much postgraduate research. From these results it can be seen that the curricula of chemistry degree programmes, as set out in this list of knowledge/skills, match very well the usage by PhD students. This was commented on by some graduates in answers to the open form questions, see below. The results for the 40 PhD students (Figure 6) show a similar pattern to the employed graduates who have a ‘Large/Very large extent’ involvement of chemistry knowledge in their activities, although ‘Principles of thermodynamics’ and ‘Kinetics of chemical change’ are scored more highly. The low scores for ‘Inorganic compounds and reactions’ and ‘Organic compounds and reactions’ possibly reflect the division of these subject areas in PhD research. Once again the generic skills are
Higher Education Academy UK Physical Sciences Centre 15 Chemical terminology Fundamental chemical principles Principles of thermodynamics Kinetics of chemical change Inorganic compounds and reactions Organic compounds and reactions Analytical techniques Safe handling of chemical materials Manipulative practical skills Skills with chemical instrumentation Planning and design of experiments Interpretation of experimental data Numeracy and computational skills Report writing skills Oral presentation skills Information retrieval skills Problemsolving skills Teamworking skills Time management/organisational Independent learning ability 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 % Figure 7: Percentage of all graduates selecting ‘Well/Very well’ for development in their degree 5.3 Knowledge/skills development in the degree programme Figure 7 gives results to the question: With respect to your undergraduate degree (including work placement when included), please indicate how well the course assisted you in developing the knowledge and skills listed. Respondents could select one of: ‘Not at all’, ‘To some extent’, ‘Well’ or ’Very well’. The percentage of graduates selecting ‘Well’ and ‘Very well’ is given. These results are again closely in line with the results obtained in the pilot survey of 2006 graduates carried out the year previously. It is reassuring to note that for all of the areas of knowledge/skills, more than 50% of graduates considered they had developed them ‘Well/ Very well’ within their degree programmes and this rose to more than 70% for the chemical knowledge/skills. The generic skills scored less well than the chemical knowledge/skills and this is further illustrated when three universities are considered individually.
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