If individuals are able to capitalise upon their education and training, and adopt relatively flexible and proactive approaches to their working lives, then they will experience favourable labour market returns and conditions. This tends to manifest itself in the form of positional conflict and competition between different groups of graduates competing for highly sought-after forms of employment (Brown and Hesketh, 2004). Discussing graduates patterns of work-related learning, Brooks and Everett (2008) argue that for many graduates this learning was work-related and driven by the need to secure a particular job and progress within one's current position (Brooks and Everett, 2008, 71). (2008) Higher Education at Work High Skills: High Value, London: HMSO. Research Paper 1, University of West England & Warwick University, Warwick Institute for Employment Research. Using Bourdieusian concepts of capital and field to outline the changing dynamic between HE and the labour market, Kupfer (2011) highlights the continued preponderance of structural and cultural inequalities through the existence of layered HE and labour market structures, operating in differentiated fields of power and resources. This should be ultimately responsive to the different ways in which students themselves personally construct such attributes and their integration within, rather than separation from, disciplinary knowledge and practices. As Clarke (2008) illustrates, the employability discourse reflects the increasing onus on individual employees to continually build up their repositories of knowledge and skills in an era when their career progression is less anchored around single organisations and specific job types. Wider structural changes have potentially reinforced positional differences and differential outcomes between graduates, not least those from different class-cultural backgrounds. 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). The consensus theory of employment argues that technological innovation is the driving force of social change (Drucker, 1993, Kerr, 1973). Both policymakers and employers have looked to exert a stronger influence on the HE agenda, particularly around its formal provisions, in order to ensure that graduates leaving HE are fit-for-purpose (Teichler, 1999, 2007; Harvey, 2000). In effect, individuals can no longer rely on their existing educational and labour market profiles for shaping their longer-term career progression. 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. The new UK coalition government, working within a framework of budgetary constraints, have been less committed to expansion and have begun capping student numbers (HEFCE, 2010). 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 . develop the ideas in his General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936). The paper explores some of the conceptual notions that have informed understandings of graduate employability, and argues for a broader understanding of employability than that offered by policymakers. Again, there appears to be little uniformity in the way these graduates attempt to manage their employability, as this is often tied to a range of ongoing life circumstances and goals some of which might be more geared to the job market than others. Much of the graduate employability focus has been on supply-side responses towards enhancing graduates skills for the labour market. Hall, P.A. Leadbetter, C. (2000) Living on Thin Air, London: Penguin. . Greenbank, P. (2007) Higher education and the graduate labour market: The Class Factor, Tertiary Education and Management 13 (4): 365376. Research on the more subjective, identity-based aspects of graduate employability also shows that graduates dispositions tend to derive from wider aspects of their educational and cultural biographies, and that these exercise some substantial influence on their propensities towards future employment. Perhaps increasingly central to the changing dynamic between HE and the labour market has been the issue of graduate employability. This paper reviews some of the key empirical and conceptual themes in the area of graduate employability over the past decade in order to make sense of graduate employability as a policy issue. Hansen, H. (2011) Rethinking certification theory and the educational development of the United States and Germany, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 29: 3155. A consensus theory approach sees sport as a source of collective harmony, a way of binding people together in a shared experience. It is also considered as both a product (a set of skills that enable) and as a . A consensus theory is one which believes that the institutions of society are working together to maintain social cohesion and stability. (2007) Round and round the houses: The Leitch review of skills, Local Economy 22 (2): 111117. Collins, R. (2000) Comparative and Historical Patterns of Education, in M. Hallinan (ed.) The New Right argument is that a range of government policies, most notably those associated with the welfare state, undermined the key institutions that create the value consensus and ensure social solidarity. Examines employability through the lenses of consensus theory and conflict theory. 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. 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. Brown, P. and Hesketh, A.J. Dearing, R. (1997) The Dearing Report: Report for the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education: Higher Education in the Learning Society, London: HMSO. (1996) Higher Education and Work, London: Jessica Kingsley. . These theorists believe that the society and its equilibrium are based on the consensus or agreement of people. Graduate Employability has come to mean many different things. In contrast to conflict theories, consensus theories are those that see people in society as having shared interests and society functioning on the basis of there being broad consensus on its norms and values. Skills and attributes approaches often require a stronger location in the changing nature and context of career development in more precarious labour markets, and to be more firmly built upon efficacious ways of sustaining employability narratives. This will help further elucidate the ways in which graduates employability is played out within the specific context of their working lives, including the various modes of professional development and work-related learning that they are engaged in and the formation of their career profiles. This was a model developed by Lorraine Dacre Pool and Peter Sewell in 2007 which identifies five essential elements that aid employability: Career Development Learning: the knowledge, skills and experience to help people manage and develop their careers. This may well confirm emerging perceptions of their own career progression and what they need to do to enhance it. Brooks, R. and Everett, G. (2009) Post-graduate reflections on the value of a degree, British Educational Research Journal 35 (3): 333349. Bowers-Brown, T. and Harvey, L. (2004) Are there too many graduates in the UK? Industry and Higher Education 18 (4): 243254. 's (2005) research showed similar patterns among UK Masters students who, as delayed entrants to the labour market and investors in further human capital, possess a range of different approaches to their future career progression. What such research has shown is that the wider cultural features of graduates frame their self-perceptions, and which can then be reinforced through their interactions within the wider employment context. Morley (2001) however states that employability is not just about . 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. 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 It draws upon various studies to highlight the different labour market perceptions, experiences and outcomes of graduates in the United Kingdom and other national contexts. Employability is a product consisting of a specific set of skills, such as soft, hard, technical, and transferable. Graduates are therefore increasingly likely to see responsibility for future employability as falling quite sharply onto the shoulders of the individual graduate: being a graduate and possessing graduate-level credentials no longer warrants access to sought-after employment, if only because so many other graduates share similar educational and pre-work profiles. In addition, the human development theory and the human capital theory come to the forefront whenever employability is considered. (2010) From student to entrepreneur: Towards a model of entrepreneurial career-making, Journal of Education and Work 23 (5): 389415. The relative symbolic violence and capital that some institutions transfer onto different graduates may inevitably feed into their identities, shaping their perceived levels of personal or identity capital. 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. 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. Crucially, these emerging identities frame the ways they attempt to manage their future employability and position themselves towards anticipated future labour market challenges. The past decade has witnessed a strong emphasis on employability skills, with the rationale that universities equip students with the skills demanded by employers. It seeks to explore shortcomings in the current employment of the concept of consensus, and in so doing to explain the continued relevance of conflict theory for sociological research. The problem of managing one's future employability is therefore seen largely as being up to the individual graduate. Consensus Theory. 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). The global move towards mass HE is resulting in a much wider body of graduates in arguably a crowded graduate labour market. 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. As Teichler (1999) points out, the increasing alignment of universities to the labour market in part reflects continued pressures to develop forms of innovation that will add value to the economy, be that through research or graduates. (2003) Higher Education and Social Class: Issues of Exclusion and Inclusion, London: Routledge. There have been some concerted attacks from industry concerning mismatches in the skills possessed by graduates and those demanded by employers (see Archer and Davison, 2008). High Educ Policy 25, 407431 (2012). The role of employers and employer organisations in facilitating this, as well as graduates learning and professional development, may therefore be paramount. Morley (2001) however states that employability . 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). (2010) Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education (The Browne Review), London: HMSO. https://doi.org/10.1057/hep.2011.26. Fugate and Kinicki (2008, p.9) describe career identity as "one's self-definition in the career context."Chope and Johnson (2008, p. 47) define career identity in a more scientific manner where they state that "career identity reflects the degree to which individuals define themselves in terms of a particular organisation, job, profession, or industry". The different orientations students are developing appear to be derived from emerging identities and self-perceptions as future employees, as well as from wider biographical dimensions of the student. This review has highlighted how this shifting dynamic has reshaped the nature of graduates transitions into the labour market, as well as the ways in which they begin to make sense of and align themselves towards future labour market demands. Elias, P. and Purcell, K. (2004) The Earnings of Graduates in Their Early Careers: Researching Graduates Seven Years on. Green, F. and Zhu, Y. Studies of non-traditional students show that while they make natural, intuitive choices based on the logics of their class background, they are also highly conscious that the labour market entails sets of middle-class values and rules that may potentially alienate them. This insight, combined with a growing consensus that government should try to stabilize employment, has led to much Brown, P., Lauder, H. and Ashton, D.N. Purists, believing that their employability is largely constitutive of their meritocratic achievements, still largely equate their employability with traditional hard currencies, and are therefore not so adept at responding to signals from employers. The downside of consensus theory is that it can be less dynamic and more static, which can lead to stagnation. Individuals therefore need to proactively manage these risks (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002). Conflict theory in sociology. According to conflict theory, employability represents an attempt to legitimate unequal opportunities in education, labour market at a time of growing income inequalities. 2023 Springer Nature Switzerland AG. %PDF-1.7 Much of the graduate employability focus has been on supply-side responses towards enhancing graduates' skills for the labour market. Roberts, K. (2009) Opportunity structures then and now, Journal of Education and Work 22 (5): 355368. Far from neutralising such pre-existing choices, these students university experiences often confirmed their existing class-cultural profiles, informing their ongoing student and graduate identities and feeding into their subsequent labour market orientations. Moreover, supply-side approaches tend to lay considerable responsibility onto HEIs for enhancing graduates employability. Bridgstock, R. (2009) The graduate attributes weve overlooked: Enhancing graduate employability through career management skills, Higher Education Research and Development 28 (1): 3144. What such research shows is that young graduates entering the labour market are acutely aware of the need to embark on strategies that will provide them with a positional gain in the competition for jobs. Consensus v. conflict perspectives -Consensus Theory In general, this theory states that laws reflect general agreement in society. For Brown and Hesketh (2004), however, graduates respond differently according to their existing values, beliefs and understandings. This may be largely due to the fact that employers have been reasonably responsive to generic academic profiles, providing that graduates fulfil various other technical and job-specific demands. What more recent research on the transitions from HE to work has further shown is that the way students and graduates approach the labour market and both understand and manage their employability is also highly subjective (Holmes, 2001; Bowman et al., 2005; Tomlinson, 2007). research investigating employability from the employers' perspective has been qualitative in nature. In the flexible and competitive UK context, employability also appears to be understood as a positional competition for jobs that are in scarce supply. x[[s~_1o:GC$rvFvuVJR+9E
4IV[uJUCF_nRj The theory of employability can be difficult to identify; there can be many factors that contribute to the idea of being employable. Employment relations is the study of the regulation of the employment relationship between employer and employee, both collectively and individually, and the determination . editors. This has illustrated the strong labour market contingency to graduates employability and overall labour market outcomes, based largely on how national labour markets coordinate the qualifications and skills of highly qualified labour. Ainley, P. (1994) Degrees of Difference, London: Lawrence Washart. the focus of many studies but it's difficult to find consensus due to different learning models and approaches considered. This appears to be a response to increased competition and flexibility in the labour market, reflecting an awareness that their longer-term career trajectories are less likely to follow stable or certain pathways. (2000) Recruiting a graduate elite? The neo-Weberian theorising of Collins (2000) has been influential here, particularly in examining the ways in which dominant social groups attempt to monopolise access to desired economic goods, including the best jobs. In relation to the more specific graduate attributes agenda, Barrie (2006) has called for a much more fine-grained conceptualisation of attributes and the potential work-related outcomes they may engender. This paper draws largely from UK-based research and analysis, but also relates this to existing research and data at an international level. 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. Becker, G. (1993) Human Capital: Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education (3rd edn), Chicago: Chicago University Press. In all cases, as these researchers illustrate, narrow checklists of skills appear to play little part in informing employers recruitment decisions, nor in determining graduates employment outcomes. Moreau, M.P. A further policy response towards graduate employability has been around the enhancement of graduates skills, following the influential Dearing Report (1997). Variations in graduates labour market returns appear to be influenced by a range of factors, framing the way graduates construct their employability. volume25,pages 407431 (2012)Cite this article. VuE*ce!\S&|3>}x`nbC_Y*o0HIS?vV7?& wociJZWM_ dBu\;QoU{=A*U[1?!q+
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^bA0({{9O?-#$ 3? Nabi, G., Holden, R. and Walmsley, A. 213240. Ideally, graduates would be able to possess both the hard currencies in the form of traditional academic qualifications together with soft currencies in the form of cultural and interpersonal qualities. 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. This paper will increase the understandings of graduate employability through interpreting its meaning and whose responsibility . 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. Introduction. Throughout, the paper explores some of the dominant conceptual themes informing discussion and research on graduate employability, in particular human capital, skills, social reproduction, positional conflict and identity. (2011) The Global Auction: The Broken Promises of Education, Jobs and Incomes, Oxford: Oxford University Press. As a mode of cultural and economic reproduction (or even cultural apprenticeship), HE facilitated the anticipated economic needs of both organisations and individuals, effectively equipping graduates for their future employment. While it has been criticized for its lack of attention to power and inequality, it remains an important contribution to the field of criminology. 229240. Needless to say, critics of supply-side and skills-centred approaches have challenged the somewhat simplistic, descriptive and under-contextualised accounts of graduate skills. Ball, S.J. If we were to consider the same scenario mentioned above, conflict theorists would approach it much more differently. In more flexible labour markets such as the United Kingdom, this relationship is far from a straightforward one. The problem has been largely attributable to universities focusing too rigidly on academically orientated provision and pedagogy, and not enough on applied learning and functional skills. It will further show that while common trends are evident across national context, the HElabour market relationship is also subject to national variability. The theory of employability can be difficult to identify; there can be many factors that contribute to the idea of being employable. (2008) Graduate Employability: The View of Employers, London: Council for Industry and Higher Education. Puhakka, A., Rautopuro, J. and Tuominen, V. (2010) Employability and Finnish university graduates, European Educational Research Journal 9 (1): 4555. 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