Graduate job adverts have nearly halved. Universities can't sell the degree as a ticket anymore.

In July 2025, UK job boards carried an average of 15,397 graduate vacancies a day. In July 2026, Adzuna counted 8,383, a record low and a fall of 45.6% in twelve months. It landed exactly as this year’s graduates started looking for work.

Adverts aren’t the whole market, and the Institute of Student Employers is right to say so. Its 2026 survey found that the large employers it represents actually hired 4% more graduates this year, although most of that growth came from a handful of firms restarting their schemes. But look at what sits alongside it. Those employers received 141 applications for every graduate vacancy, and 172 in London. HESA’s latest Graduate Outcomes data shows graduate unemployment at 7%, up from 5% in 2017/18. Fewer doors are visible, and far more people are knocking on each one.

Why careers data has become a reputation issue

For two decades, a lot of university marketing has sold the degree as a ticket, with graduates in gowns against a city skyline, headline employability percentages and the quiet promise that the investment pays off. That promise was always more complicated than the brochure suggested. In a market like this, it becomes a liability.

The public mood had already shifted. In Public First polling this spring, 65% of people described the total debt students take on as unfair. In the US, 51% of Gen Z graduates told Indeed and Harris Poll that their degree was a waste of money. When the job search gets harder, every gap between what was promised and what happened becomes a story, told by graduates themselves on the channels prospective students trust most.

When the job market tightens, every gap between what we promised and what happened becomes a story, told by our own graduates.

What I’d ask every marketing director to do

Audit every employability claim. Go through the website, prospectus and campaign copy and check each one against current data, course by course. A claim that was defensible in 2022 may not be now.

Show capability, not destination. Families want evidence that a course builds skills employers will pay for. Placements, live briefs, portfolios and named employer partners are far more convincing than one institution-wide percentage.

Be honest about the market. Students and parents read the news. Universities that acknowledge the tougher graduate market, and explain clearly what they’re doing about it, will earn far more trust than those still running last decade’s message.

Put careers and marketing in the same room. The careers service usually knows what’s really happening to graduates months before marketing does. Their insight should shape the story, and their work deserves to be part of it.

Look after recent graduates. They’re your most credible voices. Support them, listen to them and give them a reason to speak well of you, especially those who found the first year hard.

The opportunity

None of this means the degree has lost its value. HESA still finds three in four UK graduates in high-skilled work fifteen months on, and over a career the evidence favours graduates strongly. But the institutions that come through this period with their reputations intact will be the ones that stopped selling a ticket and started proving a capability.

It’s a conversation I’ll be having with careers and marketing leaders on Season 2 of the podcast, because the universities that get this right in the next two years will set the standard for everyone else.

Jonathan Sabarre FCIM MBA is Principal Consultant at QS Quacquarelli Symonds, a keynote speaker and host of Marketing Greats in Higher Education. Get the weekly email or invite him to speak.