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. Savage, M. (2003) A new class paradigm? British Journal of Sociology of Education 24 (4): 535541. Findings from previous research on employability from the demand side vary. 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. 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. Avoid the most common mistakes and prepare your manuscript for journal Moreau, M.P. Brennan, J., Kogan, M. and Teichler, U. Research Paper 1, University of West England & Warwick University, Warwick Institute for Employment Research. (2009) Processes of middle-class reproduction in a graduate employment scheme, Journal of Education and Work 22 (1): 3553. 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. Boden, R. and Nedeva, M. (2010) Employing discourse: Universities and graduate employability, Journal of Education Policy 25 (1): 3754. Tomlinson's research also highlighted the propensity towards discourses of self-responsibilisation by students making the transitions to work. Much of this is driven by a concern to stand apart from the wider graduate crowd and to add value to their existing graduate credentials. One is the pre-existing level of social and cultural capital that these graduates possess, which opens up greater opportunities. For graduates, the challenge is being able to package their employability in the form of a dynamic narrative that captures their wider achievements, and which conveys the appropriate personal and social credentials desired by employers. 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. Purpose. 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. Reay, D., Ball, S.J. These theorists believe that the society and its equilibrium are based on the consensus or agreement of people. PubMedGoogle Scholar, Tomlinson, M. Graduate Employability: A Review of Conceptual and Empirical Themes. 229240. Research by Tomlinson (2007) has shown that some students on the point of transiting to employment are significantly more orientated towards the labour market than others. Young, M. (2009) Education, globalisation and the voice of knowledge, Journal of Education and Work 22 (3): 193204. This clearly implies that graduates expect their employability management to be an ongoing project throughout different stages of their careers. Part of Springer Nature. Dominant discourses on graduates employability have tended to centre on the economic role of graduates and the capacity of HE to equip them for the labour market. 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 theory of employability can be difficult to identify; there can be many factors that contribute to the idea of being employable. The challenge, it seems, is for graduates to become adept at reading these signals and reframing both their expectations and behaviours. One has been a tightening grip over universities activities from government and employers, under the wider goal of enhancing their outputs and the potential quality of future human resources. Moreover, this is likely to shape their orientations towards the labour market, potentially affecting their overall trajectories and outcomes. It is also considered as both a product (a set of skills that enable) and as a . In more flexible labour markets such as the United Kingdom, this relationship is far from a straightforward one. Furlong, A. and Cartmel, F. (2005) Graduates from Disadvantaged Backgrounds: Early Labour Market Experiences, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Keynes's theory suggested that increases in government spending, tax cuts, and monetary expansion could be used to counteract depressions. Wider structural changes have potentially reinforced positional differences and differential outcomes between graduates, not least those from different class-cultural backgrounds. and David, M. (2006) Degree of Choice: Class, Gender and Race in Higher Education, Stoke: Trentham Books. (2008) Graduate Employability: The View of Employers, London: Council for Industry and Higher Education. 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). Google Scholar. In effect, individuals can no longer rely on their existing educational and labour market profiles for shaping their longer-term career progression. Graduates increasing propensity towards lifelong learning appears to reflect a realisation that the active management of their employability is a career-wide project that will prevail over their longer-term course of their employment. Such strategies typically involve the accruement of additional forms of credentials and capitals that can be converted into economic gain. 'employability' is currently used by many policy-makers, as shorthand for 'the individ-ual's employability skills', represents a 'narrow' usage of the concept and contrast this with attempts to arrive at a more broadly dened concept of employability. They construct their individual employability in a relative and subjective manner. It appears that students and graduates reflect upon their relationship with the labour market and what they might need to achieve their goals. 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). Dearing, R. (1997) The Dearing Report: Report for the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education: Higher Education in the Learning Society, London: HMSO. Consensus theory, on the other hand, looks at how individuals interact and how this can lead to agreement. This has some significant implications for the ways in which they understand their employability and the types of credentials and forms of capital around which this is built. Further research has also pointed to experiences of graduate underemployment (Mason, 2002; Chevalier and Lindley, 2009).This research has revealed that a growing proportion of graduates are undertaking forms of employment that are not commensurate to their level of education and skills. Johnston, B. (2007) The transition from higher education into work: Tales of cohesion and fragmentation, Education + Training 49 (7): 516585. French sociologist and criminologist Emile . (1996) Higher Education and Work, London: Jessica Kingsley. 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. 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 . (2003) The shape of research in the field of higher education and graduate employment: Some issues, Studies in Higher Education 28 (4): 413426. 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 literature review suggested that there is a reasonable degree of consensus on the key skills. A more specific set of issues have arisen concerning the types of individuals organisations want to recruit, and the extent to which HEIs can serve to produce them. Power, S. and Whitty, G. (2006) Graduating and Graduations Within the Middle Class: The Legacy of an Elite Higher Education, Cardiff: Cardiff University, School of Social Sciences. Brown, P. and Hesketh, A.J. 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. Strangleman, T. (2007) The nostalgia for the permanence of work? 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. Expands the latter into positional conflict theory, which explains how the market for credentials is rigged and how individuals are ranked in it. Universities have experienced heightened pressures to respond to an increasing range of internal and external market demands, reframing the perceived value of their activities and practices. This tends to be reflected in the perception among graduates that, while graduating from HE facilitates access to desired employment, it also increasingly has a limited role (Tomlinson, 2007; Brooks and Everett, 2009; Little and Archer, 2010). Morley (2001) however states that employability . 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). The changing HEeconomy dynamic feeds into a range of further significant issues, not least those relating to equity and access in the labour market. The paper considers the wider context of higher education (HE) and labour market change, and the policy thinking towards graduate employability. Continued training and lifelong learning is one way of staying fit in a job market context with shifting and ever-increasing employer demands. Perhaps one consensus uniting discussion on the effects of labour market change is that the new knowledge-based economy entails significant challenges for individuals, including those who are well educated. 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). 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. Name one consensus theory and one conflict theory. Compelling evidence on employers approaches to managing graduate talent (Brown and Hesketh, 2004) exposes this situation quite starkly. Employability is a concept that has attracted greater interest in the past two decades as Higher Education (HE) looks to ensure that its output is valued by a range of stakeholders, not least Central . Brown, P., Lauder, H. and Ashton, D.N. They are (i) Business graduates require specific employability skills; (2) Curricular changes enhance . 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. 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. What this has shown is that graduates see the link between participation in HE and future returns to have been disrupted through mass HE. 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 According to Keynes, the volume of employment in a country depends on the level of effective demand of the people for goods and services. 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. Learning and employability are clearly supportive constructs but this relationship appears to be under represented and lacks clarity. Southampton Education School, University of Southampton, Building 32, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK, You can also search for this author in Beck, U. and Beck-Gernsheim, E. (2002) Individualization, London: Sage. Traditionally, linkages between the knowledge and skills produced through universities and those necessitated by employers have tended to be quite flexible and open-ended. Individuals therefore need to proactively manage these risks (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002). 2.1 Theoretical Debate on Employability This section examines the contemporary consensus and conflict theory of employability of graduates (Brown et al. Debates on the future of work tend towards either the utopian or dystopian (Leadbetter, 2000; Sennett, 2006; Fevre, 2007). These negotiations continue well into graduates working lives, as they continue to strive towards establishing credible work identities. Consensus is the collective agreement of individuals. Needless to say, critics of supply-side and skills-centred approaches have challenged the somewhat simplistic, descriptive and under-contextualised accounts of graduate skills. Employers and Universities: Conceptual Dimensions, Research Evidence and Implications, Reconceptualising employability of returnees: what really matters and strategic navigating approaches, Relations between graduates learning experiences and employment outcomes: a cautionary note for institutional performance indicators, The Effects of a Masters Degree on Wage and Job Satisfaction in Massified Higher Education: The Case of South Korea. Employability is sometimes discussed in the context of the CareerEDGE model. Career choices tend to be made within specific action frames, or what they refer to as horizons for actions. 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. 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 . The study explores differences in the implicit employability theories of those involved in developing employability (educators) and those selecting and recruiting higher education (HE) students and graduates (employers). 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. Thus, HE has been traditionally viewed as providing a positive platform from which graduates could integrate successfully into economic life, as well as servicing the economy effectively. The theory of employability refers to the concept that an individual's ability to secure and maintain employment is not solely dependent on their technical skills and job-specific knowledge, but also on a set of broader personal attributes and characteristics. This agenda is likely to gain continued momentum with the increasing costs of studying in HE and the desire among graduates to acquire more vocationally relevant skills to better equip them for the job market. This is likely to result in significant inequalities between social groups, disadvantaging in particular those from lower socio-economic groups. A common theme has been state-led attempts to increasingly tighten the relationship and attune HE more closely to the economy, which itself is set within wider discourse around economic change. Edvardsson Stiwne, E. and Alves, M.G. Purpose. Reviews for a period of 20 years between 1994 and 2013 have been assimilated and categorized into two propositions. Indeed, there appears a need for further research on the overall management of graduate careers over the longer-term course of their careers. Collins, R. (2000) Comparative and Historical Patterns of Education, in M. Hallinan (ed.) 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. Graduate Employability has come to mean many different things. Keynes' theory of employment is a demand-deficient theory. 2003). The expansion of HE, and the creation of new forms of HEIs and degree provision, has resulted in a more heterogeneous mix of graduates leaving universities (Scott, 2005). Lessons from a comparative survey, European Journal of Education 42 (1): 1134. 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. Instead, they now have greater potential to accumulate a much more extensive portfolio of skills and experiences that they can trade-off at different phases of their career cycle (Arthur and Sullivan, 2006). This research highlighted that some had developed stronger identities and forms of identification with the labour market and specific future pathways. The prominence is on developing critical and reflective skills, with a view to empowering and enhancing the learner. Tomlinson, M. (2007) Graduate employability and student attitudes and orientations to the labour market, Journal of Education and Work 20 (4): 285304. Archer, W. and Davison, J. The purpose of this paper is to adopt the perspective of personal construct theory to conceptualise employability. The consensus theory emphasizes that the social order is through the shared norms, and belief systems of people. Bourdieu, P. (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 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). In light of HE expansion and the declining value of degree-level qualifications, the ever-anxious middle classes have to embark upon new strategies to achieve positional advantages for securing sought-after employment. Scott, P. (2005) Universities and the knowledge economy, Minerva 43 (3): 297309. The shift to wards a knowledge econo my where k nowledge workers These two theories are usually spoken of as in opposition based on their arguments. 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. Holden, R. and Hamblett, J. https://doi.org/10.1057/hep.2011.26. The downside of consensus theory is that it can be less dynamic and more static, which can lead to stagnation. 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. 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