The Paired Peers project, from which this excellent book emerges, will surely go down as a landmark study in British sociology. Spanning nearly 12 years, this unique and groundbreaking qualitative research has followed the lives of 90 working-class and middle-class students as they first traversed entry into, and progression through, university and now as they negotiate the precarious and uncertain graduate labour market. Reading The Degree Generation, I am struck by the ways in which the latest instalment of this project has once again moved our understanding on. These distinct contributions are made possible not only by the quality and the sensitivity of the analysis undertaken by the team (who themselves come from a variety of different class backgrounds), but also by the unique longitudinal research design undertaken. It is clear, for example, that the research team has built very important and deep relationships with their participants over the years, and this has clearly yielded insights that simply would not have been possible using other methodological tools.

The first of these is the simple observation that labour market futures are not the sole focus of graduates. Sociological and policy work in this area, particularly studies that focus on inequalities of outcome (like my own), tend to overlook the fact that young people emerging from university are not just concerned with constructing a career; rather, they are also building a life. Spending extended periods of time with participants, this simple reality becomes abundantly clear: they are not always making decisions with an instrumental emphasis on career success, occupational status or high earnings; instead, they are thinking about how to forge relationships with friends and family, how to enjoy their leisure time, or how to look after their mental health. This is important because it asks us to reconsider conventional understandings of ‘graduate success’ and instead think about young people's broader quest to find meaningful work and to live a life of, what the authors call, ‘personal value’.

Second, however, while this book certainly spotlights a uniquely broad understanding of the graduate experience, it also pulls no punches in simultaneously underlining the corrosive inequalities that stratify the UK graduate labour market. Here, in particular, they highlight how notions of ‘graduate value’ tend to be tied not only to particular universities and particular degree courses, but also, more broadly, to a certain performance or image of merit.