. Boden, R. and Nedeva, M. (2010) Employing discourse: Universities and graduate employability, Journal of Education Policy 25 (1): 3754. The role of employers and employer organisations in facilitating this, as well as graduates learning and professional development, may therefore be paramount. 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. (2011) The Global Auction: The Broken Promises of Education, Jobs and Incomes, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Name one consensus theory and one conflict theory. x[[s~_1o:GC$rvFvuVJR+9E 4IV[uJUCF_nRj 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. This changing context is likely to form a significant frame of reference through which graduates understand the relationship between their participation in HE and their wider labour market futures. Brooks, R. and Everett, G. (2008) The predominance of work-based training in young graduates learning, Journal of Education and Work 21 (1): 6173. Bridgstock, R. (2009) The graduate attributes weve overlooked: Enhancing graduate employability through career management skills, Higher Education Research and Development 28 (1): 3144. Individual employability is defined as alumnus being able . Perhaps more positively, there is evidence that employers place value on a wider range of softer skills, including graduates values, social awareness and generic intellectuality dispositions that can be nurtured within HE and further developed in the workplace (Hinchliffe and Jolly, 2011). Various stakeholders involved in HE be they policymakers, employers and paying students all appear to be demanding clear and tangible outcomes in response to increasing economic stakes. 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. 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. Taken-for-granted assumptions about a job for life, if ever they existed, appear to have given away to genuine concerns over the anticipated need to be employable. It appears that students and graduates reflect upon their relationship with the labour market and what they might need to achieve their goals. 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). Perhaps significantly, their research shows that graduates occupy a broad range of jobs and occupations, some of which are more closely matched to the archetype of the traditional graduate profession. The construction of personal employability does not stop at graduation: graduates appear aware of the need for continued lifelong learning and professional development throughout the different phases of their career progression. Continued training and lifelong learning is one way of staying fit in a job market context with shifting and ever-increasing employer demands. Perhaps increasingly central to the changing dynamic between HE and the labour market has been the issue of graduate employability. Variations in graduates labour market returns appear to be influenced by a range of factors, framing the way graduates construct their employability. 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. The evidence suggests that some graduates assume the status of knowledge workers more than others, as reflected in the differential range of outcomes and opportunities they experience. 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. Dearing, R. (1997) The Dearing Report: Report for the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education: Higher Education in the Learning Society, London: HMSO. 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). (2009) Over-education and the skills of UK graduates, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 172 (2): 307337. Similar to Holmes (2001) work, such research illustrates that graduates career progression rests on the extent to which they can achieve affirmed and legitimated identities within their working lives. Graduate employability is clearly a problem that goes far wider than formal participation in HE, and is heavily bound up in the coordination, regulation and management of graduate employment through the course of graduate working lives. Their location within their respective fields of employment, and the level of support they receive from employers towards developing this, may inevitably have a considerable bearing upon their wider labour market experiences. Learning and employability are clearly supportive constructs but this relationship appears to be under represented and lacks clarity. Increasingly, individual graduates are no longer constrained by the old corporate structures that may have traditionally limited their occupational agility. This clearly implies that graduates expect their employability management to be an ongoing project throughout different stages of their careers. Expands the latter into positional conflict theory, which explains how the market for credentials is rigged and how individuals are ranked in it. 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. Ball, S.J. 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). 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. The purpose of this paper is to adopt the perspective of personal construct theory to conceptualise employability. Problematising the notion of graduate skill is beyond the scope of this paper, and has been discussed extensively elsewhere (Holmes, 2001; Hinchliffe and Jolly, 2011).Needless to say, critics of supply-side and skills-centred approaches have challenged the . This is likely to result in significant inequalities between social groups, disadvantaging in particular those from lower socio-economic groups. Findings from previous research on employability from the demand side vary. 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. The prominence is on developing critical and reflective skills, with a view to empowering and enhancing the learner. Over time, however, this traditional link between HE and the labour market has been ruptured. (2003) Class Strategies and the Education Market: The Middle Classes and Social Advantage, London: Routledge. The theory of employability can be hard to place ; there can be many factors that contribute to the thought of being employable. Leadbetter, C. (2000) Living on Thin Air, London: Penguin. Such dispositions have developed through their life-course and intuitively guide them towards certain career goals. 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. 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 has tended to challenge some of the traditional ways of understanding graduates and their position in the labour market, not least classical theories of cultural reproduction. 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). (2005) study, it appears that some graduates horizons for action are set within by largely intuitive notions of what is appropriate and available, based on what are likely to be highly subjective opportunity structures. 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. The challenge for graduate employees is to develop strategies that militate against such likelihoods. 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. Personal characteristics, habits, and attitudes influence how you interact with others. Chapter 2 is to refute the Classical theory of employment and unemployment on both empirical and logical grounds. However despite there being different concepts to analyse the make up of "employability", the consensus of these is that there are three key qualities when assessing the employability of graduates: These . Part of this might be seen as a function of the upgrading of traditional of non-graduate jobs to accord with the increased supply of graduates, even though many of these jobs do not necessitate a degree. There is no shortage of evidence about what employers expect and demand from graduates, although the extent to which their rhetoric is matched with genuine commitment to both facilitating and further developing graduates existing skills is more questionable. 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. European-wide secondary data also confirms such patterns, as reflected in variable cross-national graduate returns (Eurostat, 2009). 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. Eurostat. Employability is a key concept in higher education. volume25,pages 407431 (2012)Cite this article. Furthermore, this relationship was marked by a relatively stable flow of highly qualified young people into well-paid and rewarding employment. Present study overcomes this issue by introducing a framework that clearly The development of mass HE, together with a range of work-related changes, has placed considerably more attention upon the economic value and utility of university graduates. . Rae, D. (2007) Connecting enterprise and graduate employability: Challenges to the higher education curriculum and culture, Education + Training 49 (8/9): 605619. Needless to say, critics of supply-side and skills-centred approaches have challenged the somewhat simplistic, descriptive and under-contextualised accounts of graduate skills. Morley (2001) however states that employability . For graduates, the inflation of HE qualifications has resulted in a gradual downturn in their value: UK graduates are aware of competing in relative terms for sought-after jobs, and with increasing employer demands. Moreover, in terms of how governments and labour markets may attempt to coordinate and regulate the supply of graduates leaving systems of mass HE. Archer, L., Hutchens, M. and Ross, A. Employability is a promise to employees that they will hold the accomplishments to happen new occupations rapidly if their occupations end out of the blue ( Baruch, 2001 ) . 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 . 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. If initial identities are affirmed during the early stages of graduates working lives, they may well ossify and set the direction for future orientations and outlooks. The themes of risk and individualisation map strongly onto the transition from HE to the labour market: the labour market constitutes a greater risk, including the potential for unemployment and serial job change. Chapter 1 1. 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. (1972) Graduates: The Sociology of an Elite, London: Methuen. The theory of employability can be difficult to identify; there can be many factors that contribute to the idea of being employable. The theory of employability can be difficult to identify; there can be many factors that contribute to the idea of being employable. Employability depends on your knowledge, skills and attitudes, how you use those assets, and how you present them to employers. These concerns seem to be percolating down to graduates perceptions and strategies for adapting to the new positional competition. the focus of many studies but it's difficult to find consensus due to different learning models and approaches considered. They also include the professional skills that enable you to be successful in the workplace. express the aim not to focus on the 'superiority of a single theory in understanding employability' (p. 897), . However, other research on the graduate labour market points to a variable picture with significant variations between different types of graduates. 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). 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. Individuals therefore need to proactively manage these risks (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002). This research highlighted that some had developed stronger identities and forms of identification with the labour market and specific future pathways. Johnston, B. Harvey, L. (2000) New realities: The relationship between higher education and employment, Tertiary Education and Management 6 (1): 317. (2010) Education and the employability of graduates: Will Bologna make a difference? European Educational Research Journal 9 (1): 3244. 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. Fevre, R. (2007) Employment insecurity and social theory: The power of nightmares, Work, Employment and Society 21 (3): 517535. Englewood Cliffs . The paper then explores research on graduates labour market returns and outcomes, and the way they are positioned in the labour market, again highlighting the national variability to graduates labour market outcomes. and David, M. (2006) Degree of Choice: Class, Gender and Race in Higher Education, Stoke: Trentham Books. Strangleman, T. (2007) The nostalgia for the permanence of work? Such perceptions are likely to be reinforced by not only the increasingly flexible labour market that graduates are entering, but also the highly differentiated system of mass HE in the United Kingdom. Kupfer, A. 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). 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. and Soskice, D.W. (2001) Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage, Oxford: Oxford University Press. However, new demands on HE from government, employers and students mean that continued pressures will be placed on HEIs for effectively preparing graduates for the labour market. Functionalism is a structural theory and posits that the social institutions and organization of society . In countries where training routes are less demarcated (for instance those with mass HE systems), these differences are less pronounced. Traditionally, linkages between the knowledge and skills produced through universities and those necessitated by employers have tended to be quite flexible and open-ended. and Leathwood, C. (2006) Graduates employment and discourse of employability: A critical analysis, Journal of Education and Work 18 (4): 305324. Research by both Furlong and Cartmel (2005) and Power and Whitty (2006) shows strong evidence of socio-economic influences on graduate returns, with graduates relative HE experiences often mediating the link between their origins and their destinations. This is further raising concerns around the distribution and equity of graduates economic opportunities, as well as the traditional role of HE credentials in facilitating access to desired forms of employment (Scott, 2005). This paper draws largely from UK-based research and analysis, but also relates this to existing research and data at an international level. A further policy response towards graduate employability has been around the enhancement of graduates skills, following the influential Dearing Report (1997). 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. Google Scholar. (2009) reported significant awareness among graduates of class inequalities for accessing specific jobs, along with expectations of potential disadvantages through employers biases around issues such as appearance, accent and cultural code. 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 The purpose of this study is to explain the growth and popularity of consensus theory in present day sociology. These two theories are usually spoken of as in opposition based on their arguments. In terms of social class influences on graduate labour market orientations, this is likely to work in both intuitive and reflexive ways. The traditional human and cultural capital that employers have always demanded now constitutes only part of graduates employability narratives. Research has tended to reveal a mixed picture on graduates and their position in the labour market (Brown and Hesketh, 2004; Elias and Purcell, 2004; Green and Zhu, 2010). Career choices tend to be made within specific action frames, or what they refer to as horizons for actions. The consensus theory of employment argues that technological innovation is the driving force of social change (Drucker, 1993, Kerr, 1973). Bowman et al. Barrie, S. (2006) Understanding what we mean by generic attributes of graduates, Higher Education 51 (2): 215241. For instance, non-traditional students who had studied at local institutions may be far more likely to fix their career goals around local labour markets, some of which may afford limited opportunities for career progression. 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 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. 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). 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. This insight, combined with a growing consensus that government should try to stabilize employment, has led to much Lessons from a comparative survey, European Journal of Education 42 (1): 1134. Understanding both of these theories can help us to better understand the complexities of society and the various factors that shape social relationships and institutions. The changing HEeconomy dynamic feeds into a range of further significant issues, not least those relating to equity and access in the labour market. They construct their individual employability in a relative and subjective manner. This relates largely to the ways in which they approach the job market and begin to construct and manage their individual employability, mediated largely through the types of work-related dispositions and identities that they are developing. One particular consequence of a massified, differentiated HE is therefore likely to be increased discrimination between different types of graduates. A Social Cognitive Theory. For Beck and Beck-Germsheim (2002), processes of institutionalised individualisation mean that the labour market effectively becomes a motor for individualisation, in that responsibility for economic outcomes is transferred away from work organisations and onto individuals. 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. They are (i) Business graduates require specific employability skills; (2) Curricular changes enhance . 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). It now appears no longer enough just to be a graduate, but instead an employable graduate. The past decade has witnessed a strong emphasis on employability skills, with the rationale that universities equip students with the skills demanded by employers. (eds.) Brown, P. and Hesketh, A.J. 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. % Consensus v. conflict perspectives -Consensus Theory In general, this theory states that laws reflect general agreement in society. 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