Helen Connor, Associate Director, CIHE

Helen Connor, BSc (Edinburgh) has been an independent researcher and consultant for many years and worked for CIHE since 2004. Her research interests and expertise focus on higher education, skills and the labour market, covering a range of issues from graduate employment and employability, workforce development and work-based learning to widening participation, equality and diversity and vocational progression routes into higher education. At CIHE, she has been responsible for much of its recent work on workforce development and higher skills. She also works independently of CIHE as a researcher and with a number of other organisations on joint research projects. She is a Principal Associate Fellow at the Institute for Employment Studies (IES), Associate of the Open University’s Centre for Higher Education Research and Information (CHERI), visiting fellow at the University of Southampton (School of Education), and a NICEC Associate Fellow.

CIHE projects have included:

• Identifying the benefits to employers and barriers to recruiting international graduates reported in Global Horizons: recruiting international students and graduates from UK universities (CIHE, July 2009)
• Exploring employer engagement with higher education for workforce development through a number of business-focused case studies, reported in Influence through Collaboration: Employer demand for higher learning and engagement with higher education (CIHE, October 2008)
• Key lessons from examples of successful workforce development provision by higher education, reported in Workforce Development: what works and why? (CIHE, June 2007)
• Visiting the US to investigate vocational and work-based pathways to higher education in California, reported in Workforce development and Progression to Higher Education: the Californian experience (CIHE, 2006, published jointly with Aimhigher London West)
• A CIHE consultation on work-based learning which identified a number of issues for both higher education and business , reported in Workforce Development and Higher Education (CIHE, Sept 2005)
• An investigation of trends in corporate graduate recruitment and impact of the wider and more diverse student output from higher education, reported in Fishing for Talent in a Wider Pool (CIHE, March 2005)

This year, she has been involved in a pilot CIHE study to explore the value of graduates from an employer perspective, including the added value of recruiting graduates with higher degrees; and is currently leading on behalf of CIHE a joint study with CRAC and NICEC, for the DBIS, on STEM graduates and their decisions to work in non-STEM jobs and careers.

In addition to her CIHE publications, she has a range of papers and reports published by other organisations, examples recently include:

Equality in Higher education: statistical report 2008, Equality Challenge Unit, January 2009, available from pubs@ecu.ac.uk

Mapping equality data in the higher education sector, Equality Challenge Unit, 2008, available from pubs@ecu.ac.uk

University admissions and vocational qualifications: two years on (with Elaine Sinclair), Action on Access, May 2008 (an update on an earlier study) available from www.actiononaccess.org.uk

Graduate Training and development: current issues (with Shaw S), Guest Editorial of special edition of ‘Education and Training’, Vol 50, no.5, 2008

When will diversity of higher education mean diversity of entry routes for young people? (with B. Little), Journal of Access and Policy Practice, Vo 4, Spring 2007

An interim evaluation of Lifelong Learning Networks (with CHERI), HEFCE, January 2008

Welsh graduates and their jobs (with C. Tyers and others at IES) 2006, a report for the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales, downloadable at www.hefcw.ac.uk

Towards a Strategy for Workplace learning: report of research for HEFCE (with B Little and others, at CHERI and KPMG), HEFCE, 2006