Employability is a product consisting of a specific set of skills, such as soft, hard, technical, and transferable. (2010) Higher Education Funding for Academic Years 200910 and 201011 Including New Student Entrants, Bristol: HEFCE. Keynes' theory of employment is a demand-deficient theory. Chapter 1 1. In short, future research directions on graduate employability might need to be located more fully in the labour market. Questions continued to be posed over the specific role of HE in regulating skilled labour, and the overall matching of the supply of graduates leaving HE to their actual economic demand and utility (Bowers-Brown and Harvey, 2004). Hammer, Peter McIlveen, Soo Jeung Lee, Seungjung Kim & Jisun Jung, Higher Education Policy Findings from previous research on employability from the demand side vary. The correspondence between HE and the labour market rests largely around three main dimensions: (i) in terms of the knowledge and skills that HE transfers to graduates and which then feeds back into the labour market, (ii) the legitimatisation of credentials that serve as signifiers to employers and enable them to screen prospective future employees and (iii) the enrichment of personal and cultural attributes, or what might be seen as personality. It appears that students and graduates reflect upon their relationship with the labour market and what they might need to achieve their goals. Maria Eliophotou Menon, Eleftheria Argyropoulou & Andreas Stylianou, Ly Thi Tran, Nga Thi Hang Ngo, Tien Thi Hanh Ho, David Walters, David Zarifa & Brittany Etmanski, Jason L. Brown, Sara J. Such notions of economic change tend to be allied to human capital conceptualisations of education and economic growth (Becker, 1993). Career choices tend to be made within specific action frames, or what they refer to as horizons for actions. <>stream Summary. How employable a graduate is, or perceives themselves to be, is derived largely from their self-perception of themselves as a future employee and the types of work-related dispositions they are developing. 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. Keynesian economics is an economic theory of total spending in the economy and its effects on output and inflation . This may have a strong bearing upon how both graduates and employers socially construct the problem of graduate employability. Department for Education (DFE). Book The role of employers and employer organisations in facilitating this, as well as graduates learning and professional development, may therefore be paramount. 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. volume25,pages 407431 (2012)Cite this article. These concerns may further feed into students approaches to HE more generally, increasingly characterised by more instrumental, consumer-driven and acquisitive learning approaches (Naidoo and Jamieson, 2005). 2003). Employers value employability skills because they regard these as indications of how you get along with other team members and customers, and how efficiently you are likely to handle your job performance and career success. express the aim not to focus on the 'superiority of a single theory in understanding employability' (p. 897), . 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. Boden, R. and Nedeva, M. (2010) Employing discourse: Universities and graduate employability, Journal of Education Policy 25 (1): 3754. The increasingly flexible and skills-rich nature of contemporary employment means that the highly educated are empowered in an economy demanding the creativity and abstract knowledge of those who have graduated from HE. 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). Employers propensities towards recruiting specific types of graduates perhaps reflects deep-seated issues stemming from more transactional, cost-led and short-term approaches to developing human resources (Warhurst, 2008). Consensus theories include functionalism, strain theory and subcultural theory. The consensus theory of employment and the conflict theory of employment present contradictory implications about highly skilled workers' opportunity cost for pursuing entrepreneurial activities in the knowledge economy. Roberts, K. (2009) Opportunity structures then and now, Journal of Education and Work 22 (5): 355368. The purpose of this article is to show that the way employability is typically defined in official statements is seriously flawed because it ignores what will be called the 'duality of employability'. The most discernable changes in HE have been its gradual massification over the past three decades and, in more recent times, the move towards greater individual expenditure towards HE in the form of student fees. Strathdee, R. (2011) Educational reform, inequality and the structure of higher education in New Zealand, Journal of Education and Work 24 (1): 2749. Bowman et al. Hesketh, A.J. Theory could be viewed as a coherent group of assumptions or propositions put forth to . Moreover, there is evidence of national variations between graduates from different countries, contingent on the modes of capitalism within different countries. There are two key factors here. 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. Chapter 2 is to refute the Classical theory of employment and unemployment on both empirical and logical grounds. Research done over the past decade has highlighted the increasing pressures anticipated and experienced by graduates seeking well-paid and graduate-level forms of employment. Research Paper 1, University of West England & Warwick University, Warwick Institute for Employment Research. Moreover, in the context of flexible and competitive globalisation, the highly educated may find themselves forming part of an increasingly disenfranchised new middle class, continually at the mercy of agile, cost-driven flows in skilled labour, and in competition with contemporaries from newly emerging economies. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate the slides or the slide controller buttons at the end to navigate through each slide. https://doi.org/10.1057/hep.2011.26. Graduates in different occupations were shown to be drawing upon particular graduate skill-sets, be that occupation-specific expertise, managerial decision-making skills, and interactive, communication-based competences. 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. Keynes's theory suggested that increases in government spending, tax cuts, and monetary expansion could be used to counteract depressions. Ainley, P. (1994) Degrees of Difference, London: Lawrence Washart. 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. Nabi, G., Holden, R. and Walmsley, A. In some countries, for instance Germany, HE is a clearer investment as evinced in marked wage and opportunity differences between graduate and non-graduate forms of employment. Employability also encompasses significant equity issues. 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. Personal characteristics, habits, and attitudes influence how you interact with others. This will largely shape how graduates perceive the linkage between their higher educational qualification and their future returns. There are many different lists of cardinal accomplishments . At one level, there has been an optimistic vision of the economy as being fluid and knowledge-intensive (Leadbetter, 2000), readily absorbing the skills and intellectual capital that graduates possess. This is further reflected in pay difference and breadth of career opportunities open to different genders. Continued training and lifelong learning is one way of staying fit in a job market context with shifting and ever-increasing employer demands. This is likely to be carried through into the labour market and further mediated by graduates ongoing experiences and interactions post-university. Mason, G. (2002) High skills utilisation under mass higher education: Graduate employment in the service industries in Britain, Journal of Education and Work 14 (4): 427456. Knight, P. and Yorke, M. (2004) Learning, Curriculum and Employability in Higher Education, London: Routledge Falmer. 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. Yet at a time when stakes within the labour market have risen, graduates are likely to demand that this link becomes a more tangible one. While at one level the correspondence between HE and the labour market has become blurred by these various structural changes, there has also been something of a tightening of the relationship. Part of Springer Nature. 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