Gauging social science graduates’ contributions to knowledge exchange with industry

This chapter explores a new approach to assessing knowledge transfer using labour force survey data, and applies it to assess the contributions of graduates in social sciences to different industries. It first briefly describes the challenges in assessing social scientists’ contribution to knowledge transfer and industry innovation. It then provides evidence on how graduates in social sciences contribute to different economic sectors compared to those in other disciplines, building on existing evidence based on patent data and case studies, and then exploiting new evidence from labour force surveys. The chapter discusses the advantages of using this approach for capturing the flow of human capital from university to industry, and outlines the caveats.