It was not uncommon for students participating, for example, in voluntary or community work to couch these activities in terms of developing teamworking and potential leadership skills. The challenge, it seems, is for graduates to become adept at reading these signals and reframing both their expectations and behaviours. The differentiated and heterogeneous labour market that graduates enter means that there is likely to be little uniformity in the way students constructs employability, notionally and personally. Chapter 1 1. Teichler, U. The simultaneous decoupling and tightening in the HElabour market relationship therefore appears to have affected the regulation of graduates into specific labour market positions and their transitions more generally. 2.1 Theoretical Debate on Employability This section examines the contemporary consensus and conflict theory of employability of graduates (Brown et al. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of some of the dominant empirical and conceptual themes in the area of graduate employment and employability over the past decade. Employability. Bourdieu, P. (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Such changes have coincided with what has typically been seen as a shift towards a more flexible, post-industrialised knowledge-driven economy that places increasing demands on the workforce and necessitates new forms of work-related skills (Hassard et al., 2008). Hodkinson, P. and Sparkes, A.C. (1997) Careership: A sociological theory of career decision-making, British Journal of Sociology of Education 18 (1): 2944. (2008) Managing in the New Economy: Restructuring White-Collar Work in the USA, UK and Japan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moreover, in such contexts, there is greater potential for displacement between levels of education and occupational position; in turn, graduates may also perceive a potential mismatch between their qualifications and their returns in the job market. Research has continually highlighted engrained employer biases towards particular graduates, ordinarily those in possession of traditional cultural and academic currencies and from more prestigious HEIs (Harvey et al., 1997; Hesketh, 2000). VuE*ce!\S&|3>}x`nbC_Y*o0HIS?vV7?& wociJZWM_ dBu\;QoU{=A*U[1?!q+
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^bA0({{9O?-#$ 3? Expands the latter into positional conflict theory, which explains how the market for credentials is rigged and how individuals are ranked in it. Bowman, H., Colley, H. and Hodkinson, P. (2005) Employability and Career Progression of Fulltime UK Masters Students: Final Report for the Higher Education Careers Services Unit, Leeds: Lifelong Learning Institute. Moreover, there is evidence of national variations between graduates from different countries, contingent on the modes of capitalism within different countries. *1*.J\ A range of key factors seem to determine graduates access to different returns in the labour market that are linked to the specific profile of the graduate. It appears that students and graduates reflect upon their relationship with the labour market and what they might need to achieve their goals. This contrasts with more flexible liberal economies such as the United Kingdom, United States and Australia, characterised by more intensive competition, deregulation and lower employment tenure. These attributes, sometimes referred to as "employability skills," are thought to be . Brown, Hesketh and Williams (2002) concur that the . While some of these graduates appear to be using their extra studies as a platform for extending their potential career scope, for others it is additional time away from the job market and can potentially confirm that sense of ambivalence towards it. Keynesian economics is an economic theory of total spending in the economy and its effects on output and inflation . Such notions of economic change tend to be allied to human capital conceptualisations of education and economic growth (Becker, 1993). These changes have added increasing complexities to graduates transition into the labour market, as well as the traditional link between graduation and subsequent labour market reward. The challenge for graduate employees is to develop strategies that militate against such likelihoods. (employment, marriage, children) that strengthen social bonds -Population Heterogeneity Stability in criminal offending is due to an anti-social characteristic (e., low self-control) that reverberates . Wolf, A. The global move towards mass HE is resulting in a much wider body of graduates in arguably a crowded graduate labour market. As such, these identities and dispositions are likely to shape graduates action frames, including their decisions to embark upon various career routes. Keynes's theory suggested that increases in government spending, tax cuts, and monetary expansion could be used to counteract depressions. Boden, R. and Nedeva, M. (2010) Employing discourse: Universities and graduate employability, Journal of Education Policy 25 (1): 3754. (2003) Higher Education and Social Class: Issues of Exclusion and Inclusion, London: Routledge. Value consensus assumes that the norms and values of society are generally agreed and that social life is based on co-operation rather than conflict. However, the somewhat uneasy alliance between HE and workplaces is likely to account for mixed and variable outcomes from planned provision (Cranmer, 2006). yLy;l_L&. Thus, a significant feature of research over the past decade has been the ways in which these changes have entered the collective and personal consciousnesses of students and graduates leaving HE. Morley ( 2001 ) nevertheless states that . . The problem of graduate employability and skills may not so much centre on deficits on the part of graduates, but a graduate over-supply that employers find challenging to manage. Morley, L. and Aynsley, S. (2007) Employers, quality and standards in higher education: Shared values and vocabularies or elitism and inequalities? Higher Education Quarterly 61 (3): 229249. This is perhaps reflected in the increasing amount of new, modern and niche forms of graduate employment, including graduate sales mangers, marketing and PR officers, and IT executives. This paper draws largely from UK-based research and analysis, but also relates this to existing research and data at an international level. According to Benson, Morgan and Fillipaios (2013) social skills and inherent personality traits are deemed as more important than technical skills or a Smetherham, C. (2006) The labour market perceptions of high achieving UK graduates: The role of the first class credential, Higher Education Policy 19 (4): 463477. This tends to be mediated by a range of contextual variables in the labour market, not least graduates relations with significant others in the field and the specific dynamics inhered in different forms of employment. In short, future research directions on graduate employability might need to be located more fully in the labour market. (2007) The transition from higher education into work: Tales of cohesion and fragmentation, Education + Training 49 (7): 516585. For other students, careers were far more tangential to their personal goals and lifestyles, and were not something they were prepared to make strong levels of personal and emotional investment towards. Avoid the most common mistakes and prepare your manuscript for journal More positive accounts of graduates labour market outcomes tend to support the notion of HE as a positive investment that leads to favourable returns. Overall, it was shown that UK graduates tend to take more flexible and less predictable routes to their destined employment, with far less in the way of horizontal substitution between their degree studies and target employment. The purpose of this paper is to adopt the perspective of personal construct theory to conceptualise employability. and David, M. (2006) Degree of Choice: Class, Gender and Race in Higher Education, Stoke: Trentham Books. Rae, D. (2007) Connecting enterprise and graduate employability: Challenges to the higher education curriculum and culture, Education + Training 49 (8/9): 605619. Moreover, this is likely to shape their orientations towards the labour market, potentially affecting their overall trajectories and outcomes. Consensus Vs. High Educ Policy 25, 407431 (2012). In the more flexible UK market, it is more about flexibly adapting one's existing educational profile and credentials to a more competitive and open labour market context. It will further show that while common trends are evident across national context, the HElabour market relationship is also subject to national variability. Reviews for a period of 20 years between 1994 and 2013 have been assimilated and categorized into two propositions. For much of the past decade, governments have shown a commitment towards increasing the supply of graduates entering the economy, based on the technocratic principle that economic changes necessitates a more highly educated and flexible workforce (DFES, 2003) This rationale is largely predicated on increased economic demand for higher qualified individuals resulting from occupational changes, and whereby the majority of new job growth areas are at graduate level. Puhakka, A., Rautopuro, J. and Tuominen, V. (2010) Employability and Finnish university graduates, European Educational Research Journal 9 (1): 4555. They found that a much higher proportion of female graduates work within public sector employment compared with males who attained more private sector and IT-based employment. The decline of the established graduate career trajectory has somewhat disrupted the traditional link between HE, graduate credentials and occupational rewards (Ainley, 1994; Brown and Hesketh, 2004). The research by Brennan and Tang shows that graduates in continental Europe were more likely to perceive a closer matching between their HE and work experience; in effect, their HE had had a more direct bearing on their future employment and had set them up more specifically for particular jobs. Employment in Academia: To What Extent Are Recent Doctoral Graduates of Various Fields of Study Obtaining Permanent Versus Temporary Academic Jobs in Canada? The consensus theory of employability states that enhancing graduates' employability and advancing their careers requires improving their human capital, specically their skill development (Selvadurai et al.2012). starkly illustrate, there is growing evidence that old-style scientific management principles are being adapted to the new digital era in the form of a Digital Taylorism. This is likely to be carried through into the labour market and further mediated by graduates ongoing experiences and interactions post-university. The past decade in the United Kingdom has therefore seen a strong focus on employability skills, including communication, teamworking, ICT and self-management being built into formal curricula. At another level, changes in the HE and labour market relationship map on to wider debates on the changing nature of employment more generally, and the effects this may have on the highly qualified. ISSN 2039-9340 (print) ISSN 2039-2117 (online) Return to Article Details Graduate Employability Skills: Differences between the Private and the Public Sector in South Africa Download Download PDF Graduate Employability Skills: Differences between the Private and the Public Sector in South Africa Download Download PDF Harvey, L., Moon, S. and Geall, V. (1997) Graduates Work: Organisational Change and Students Attributes, Birmingham: QHE. Fevre, R. (2007) Employment insecurity and social theory: The power of nightmares, Work, Employment and Society 21 (3): 517535. 229240. Dearing, R. (1997) The Dearing Report: Report for the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education: Higher Education in the Learning Society, London: HMSO. Intentionally avoiding the term employability (because of a lack of consensus on the specific meaning and measurement of this concept), they instead define movement capital as: 'skills, knowledge, competencies and attitudes influencing an individual's career mobility opportunities' (p. 742). This paper aims to place the issue of graduate employability in the context of the shifting inter-relationship between HE and the labour market, and the changing regulation of graduate employment. Graduates are perceived as potential key players in the drive towards enhancing value-added products and services in an economy demanding stronger skill-sets and advanced technical knowledge. Green, F. and Zhu, Y. Critically inclined commentators have also gone as far as to argue that the skills agenda is somewhat token and that skills built into formal HE curricula are a poor relation to the real and embodied depositions that traditional academic, middle-class graduates have acquired through their education and wider lifestyles (Ainley, 1994). Relatively high levels of personal investment are required to enhance one's employment profile and credentials, and to ensure that a return is made on one's investment in study. While investment in HE may result in favourable outcomes for some graduates, this is clearly not the case across the board. Moreover, individual graduates may need to reflexively align themselves to the new challenges of labour market, from which they can make appropriate decisions around their future career development and their general life courses. Young, M. (2009) Education, globalisation and the voice of knowledge, Journal of Education and Work 22 (3): 193204. The expansion of HE and changing economic demands is seen to engender new forms of social conflict and class-related tensions in the pursuit for rewarding and well-paid employment. Hesketh, A.J. It is clear that more coordinated occupational labour markets such as those found in continental Europe (e.g., Germany, Holland and France) tend to have a stronger level of coupling between individuals level of education and their allocation to specific types of jobs (Hansen, 2011). Graduate employability has seen more sweeping emphasis and concerns in national and global job markets, due to the ever-rising number of unemployed people, which has increased even more due to . (2010) Education and the employability of graduates: Will Bologna make a difference? European Educational Research Journal 9 (1): 3244. Article Little (2001) suggests, that it is a multi-dimensional concept, and there is a need to distinguish between the factors relevant to the job and preparation for work. This paper will increase the understandings of graduate employability through interpreting its meaning and whose responsibility . Even those students with strong intrinsic orientations around extra-curricula activities are aware of the need to translate these into marketable, value-added skills. The strengths of consensus theory are that it is a more objective approach and that it is easier to achieve agreement. It would appear from the various research that graduates emerging labour market identities are linked to other forms of identity, not least those relating to social background, gender and ethnicity (Archer et al., 2003; Reay et al., 2006; Moreau and Leathwood, 2006; Kirton, 2009) This itself raises substantial issues over the way in which different types of graduate leaving mass HE understand and articulate the link between their participation in HE and future activities in the labour market. The concerns that have been well documented within the non-graduate youth labour market (Roberts, 2009) are also clearly resonating with the highly qualified. This has coincided with the movement towards more flexible labour markets, the overall contraction of management forms of employment, an increasing intensification in global competition for skilled labour and increased state-driven attempts to maximise the outputs of the university system (Harvey, 2000; Brown and Lauder, 2009). Such graduates are therefore likely to shy away, or psychologically distance themselves, from what they perceive as particular cultural practices, values and protocols that are at odds with their existing ones. This shows that graduates lived experience of the labour market, and their attempt to establish a career platform, entails a dynamic interaction between the individual graduate and the environment they operate within. Brooks, R. and Everett, G. (2009) Post-graduate reflections on the value of a degree, British Educational Research Journal 35 (3): 333349.