Little ( 2001 ) suggests, that it is a multi-dimensional construct, and there is a demand to separate between the factors relevant to the occupation and readying for work. Boden, R. and Nedeva, M. (2010) Employing discourse: Universities and graduate employability, Journal of Education Policy 25 (1): 3754. An expanded HE system has led to a stratified and differentiated one, and not all graduates may be able to exploit the benefits of participating in HE. 229240. Brown, P., Lauder, H. and Ashton, D.N. Chevalier, A. and Lindley, J. (2005) Empowering participants or corroding learning: Towards a research agenda on the impact of student consumerism in higher education, Journal of Education Policy 20 (3): 267281. Rather than being insulated from these new challenges, highly educated graduates are likely to be at the sharp end of the increasing intensification of work, and its associated pressures around continual career management. 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. The Varieties of Capitalism approach developed by Hall and Soskice (2001) may be useful here in explaining the different ways in which different national economies coordinate the relationship between their education systems and human resource strategies. 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. Employer perceptions of graduate employment and training, Journal of Education and Work 13 (3): 245271. 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). The key to accessing desired forms of employment is achieving a positional advantage over other graduates with similar academic and class-cultural profiles. What this has shown is that graduates see the link between participation in HE and future returns to have been disrupted through mass HE. Research done by Brooks and Everett (2008) and Little (2008) indicates that while HE-level study may be perceived by graduates as equipping them for continued learning and providing them with the dispositions and confidence to undertake further learning opportunities, many still perceive a need for continued professional training and development well beyond graduation. High Educ Policy 25, 407431 (2012). This may well confirm emerging perceptions of their own career progression and what they need to do to enhance it. Bridgstock, R. (2009) The graduate attributes weve overlooked: Enhancing graduate employability through career management skills, Higher Education Research and Development 28 (1): 3144. Hesketh, A.J. Archer, W. and Davison, J. Graduates clearly follow different employment pathways and embark upon a multifarious range of career routes, all leading to different experiences and outcomes. Hodkinson, P. and Sparkes, A.C. (1997) Careership: A sociological theory of career decision-making, British Journal of Sociology of Education 18 (1): 2944. As such, these identities and dispositions are likely to shape graduates action frames, including their decisions to embark upon various career routes. Southampton Education School, University of Southampton, Building 32, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK, You can also search for this author in The global move towards mass HE is resulting in a much wider body of graduates in arguably a crowded graduate labour market. Graduate employment rate is often used to assess the quality of university provision, despite that employability and employment are two different concepts. It first relates the theme of graduate employability to the changing dynamic in the relationship between HE and the labour market, and the changing role of HE in regulating graduate-level work. 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. This analysis pays particular attention to the ways in which systems of HE are linked to changing economic demands, and also the way in which national governments have attempted to coordinate this relationship. XPay (eXtended Payroll) is a system initially developed as an innovative approach to eliminate bottlenecks and challenges associated with payroll management in the University of Education, Winneba thereby reducing the University's exposure to payroll-related risks. Summary. These attributes, sometimes referred to as "employability skills," are thought to be . Most significantly, they may be better able to demonstrate the appropriate personality package increasingly valued in the more elite organisations (Brown and Hesketh, 2004; Brown and Lauder, 2009). Furlong, A. and Cartmel, F. (2005) Graduates from Disadvantaged Backgrounds: Early Labour Market Experiences, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. (2006) The evolution of the boundaryless career concept: Examining the physical and psychological mobility, Journal of Vocational Behavior 69 (1): 1929. In countries where training routes are less demarcated (for instance those with mass HE systems), these differences are less pronounced. Holmes, L. (2001) Graduate employability: The graduate identity approach, Quality in Higher Education 7 (1): 111119. According to Benson, Morgan and Fillipaios (2013) social skills and inherent personality traits are deemed as more important than technical skills or a Hassard, J., McCann, L. and Morris, J.L. 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. and Leathwood, C. (2006) Graduates employment and discourse of employability: A critical analysis, Journal of Education and Work 18 (4): 305324. Little, B. and Archer, L. (2010) Less time to study, less well prepared for work, yet satisfied with higher education: A UK perspective on links between higher education and the labour market, Journal of Education and Work 23 (3): 275296. Present study overcomes this issue by introducing a framework that clearly If we were to consider the same scenario mentioned above, conflict theorists would approach it much more differently. The relatively stable and coherent employment narratives that individuals traditionally enjoyed have given way to more fractured and uncertain employment futures brought about by the intensity and inherent precariousness of the new short-term, transactional capitalism (Strangleman, 2007). His theory is thus known as demand-oriented approach. The role of employers and employer organisations in facilitating this, as well as graduates learning and professional development, may therefore be paramount. This is particularly evident among the bottom-earning graduates who, as Green and Zhu show, do not necessarily attain better longer-term earnings than non-graduates. Dearing, R. (1997) The Dearing Report: Report for the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education: Higher Education in the Learning Society, London: HMSO. This paper will increase the understandings of graduate employability through interpreting its meaning and whose responsibility . Hansen, H. (2011) Rethinking certification theory and the educational development of the United States and Germany, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 29: 3155. 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. Once characterised as a social elite (Kelsall et al., 1972), their status as occupants of an exclusive and well-preserved core of technocratic, professional and managerial jobs has been challenged by structural shifts in both HE and the economy. . These negotiations continue well into graduates working lives, as they continue to strive towards establishing credible work identities. 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. Thus, graduates successful integration in the labour market may rest less on the skills they possess before entering it, and more on the extent to which these are utilised and enriched through their actual participation in work settings. Bowman et al. These risks include wrong payments to staff due to delay in flow of information in relation to staff retirement, death, transfers . Well-developed and well-executed employability provisions may not necessarily equate with graduates actual labour market experiences and outcomes. Elias, P. and Purcell, K. (2004) The Earnings of Graduates in Their Early Careers: Researching Graduates Seven Years on. 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. The theory of employability can be difficult to identify; there can be many factors that contribute to the idea of being employable. Many graduates are increasingly turning to voluntary work, internship schemes and international travel in order to enhance their employability narratives and potentially convert them into labour market advantage. In some parts of Europe, graduates frame their employability more around the extent to which they can fulfil the specific occupational criteria based on specialist training and knowledge. In a similar vein, Greenbank (2007) also reported concerns among working-class graduates of perceived deficiencies in the cultural and social capital needed to access specific types of jobs. (2011) The Global Auction: The Broken Promises of Education, Jobs and Incomes, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Career choices tend to be made within specific action frames, or what they refer to as horizons for actions. A range of other research has also exposed the variability within and between graduates in different national contexts (Edvardsson Stiwne and Alves, 2010; Puhakka et al., 2010). (1972) Graduates: The Sociology of an Elite, London: Methuen. (2009) Over-education and the skills of UK graduates, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 172 (2): 307337. The employability and labour market returns of graduates also appears to have a strong international dimension to it, given that different national economies regulate the relationship between HE and labour market entry differently (Teichler, 2007). Morley (2001) however states that employability . Hammer, Peter McIlveen, Soo Jeung Lee, Seungjung Kim & Jisun Jung, Higher Education Policy Consensus theory, on the other hand, looks at how individuals interact and how this can lead to agreement. In the United Kingdom, for example, state commitment to public financing of HE has declined; although paradoxically, state continues to exert pressures on the system to enhance its outputs, quality and overall market responsiveness (DFE, 2010). and Soskice, D.W. (2001) Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Consequently, they will have to embark upon increasingly uncertain employment futures, continually having to respond to the changing demands of internal and external labour markets. Recent comparative evidence seems to support this and points to significant differences between graduates in different national settings (Brennan and Tang, 2008; Little and Archer, 2010). 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. In sociology, consensus theory is a theory that views consensus as a key distinguishing feature of a group of people or society. research investigating employability from the employers' perspective has been qualitative in nature. That graduates employability is intimately related to personal identities and frames of reference reflects the socially constructed nature of employability more generally: it entails a negotiated ordering between the graduate and the wider social and economic structures through which they are navigating. As Brown et al. They construct their individual employability in a relative and subjective manner. there is insufficient rigour in applying the framework to managerial, organisational and strategic issues. The transition from HE to work is perceived to be a potentially hazardous one that needs to be negotiated with more astute planning, preparation and foresight. Holden, R. and Hamblett, J. The inter-relationship between HE and the labour market has been considerably reshaped over time. Less positively, their research exposed gender disparities gap in both pay and the types of occupations graduates work within. 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. Warhurst, C. (2008) The knowledge economy, skills and government labour market intervention, Policy Studies 29 (1): 7186. This insight, combined with a growing consensus that government should try to stabilize employment, has led to much Little and Arthur's research shows similar patterns among European graduates, there are generally higher levels of graduate satisfaction with HE as a preparation for future employment, as well as much closer matching up between graduates credentials and the requirements of jobs. 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. 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 also extends to subject areas where there has been a traditionally closer link between the curricula content and specific job areas (Wilton, 2008; Rae, 2007). Roberts, K. (2009) Opportunity structures then and now, Journal of Education and Work 22 (5): 355368. . Chapter 1 1. 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. Taylor, J. and Pick, D. (2008) The work orientations of Australian university students, Journal of Education and Work 21 (5): 405421. 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. Morley ( 2001 ) nevertheless states that . Reviews for a period of 20 years between 1994 and 2013 have been assimilated and categorized into two propositions. Consensus is the collective agreement of individuals. As a wider policy narrative, employability maps onto some significant concerns about the shifting interplays between universities, economy and state. The theory of employability can be hard to place ; there can be many factors that contribute to the thought of being employable. Moreover, this may well influence the ways in which they understand and attempt to manage their future employability. Part of Springer Nature. The second relates to the biases employers harbour around different graduates from different universities in terms of these universities relative so-called reputational capital (Harvey et al., 1997; Brown and Hesketh, 2004). Employability provisions may not necessarily equate with graduates actual labour market has been qualitative in nature staff to... 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