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Giving graduates the employability edge

3 September 2024
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Durham graduates are some of the most sought after, offering a range of knowledge, skills and experience developed by excellent teaching, internationally rated research and a wealth of opportunities outside the traditional curriculum.

Not only is Durham University world-leading in academic fields, but we also pride ourselves on challenging our students to participate above and beyond their academic commitments. The breadth and depth of opportunities for wider student experience – from sports and music to membership of Common Rooms, mentoring or student enterprise – helps our students develop as people. This rounded package of experience gives Durham graduates the employability edge with employers on their career journey.  

Student enterprise and entrepreneurship

We inspire our students and graduates to think like leaders, spark new ideas and deliver global impact, so as well as going on to employment, we are proud of the entrepreneurship of many of our graduates.

Our Hazan Venture Lab is a dedicated entrepreneurial space designed to help students explore their business ideas, independently from their chosen field of study. In the last five years, our students have worked with the Venture Lab team to create 140 purpose-driven new startups.

You can read all about just some of our aspiring entrepreneurs and celebrate their achievements in our new Student and Graduate Enterprise brochure.  

World rankings 

Our consistent placing within the top of university rankings tables such as the QS World University Rankings is important to the University to reflect our place amongst the world’s best universities. For the 2025 rankings, we placed joint 89th in the world from over 1,500 universities that were featured, with an Employer Reputation score of 83.9.

These rankings help us demonstrate our strong reputation to potential future students as well as our research strengths among the academic community. They are created with leading global surveys of employer and academic opinion that informs the rankings.

If you are a current academic or potential employer of graduates, your impartial responses to the QS survey could contribute to the precision of survey outcomes.

Our relationship with graduate recruiters is most important to us and a vital part of providing our students with valuable opportunities. If you would like to raise your profile as an employer with our current students, our Careers, Employability and Enterprise team would be happy to hear from you.      

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