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 As HE's role for regulating future professional talent becomes reshaped, questions prevail over whose responsibility it is for managing graduates transitions and employment outcomes: universities, states, employers or individual graduates themselves? These changes have added increasing complexities to graduates transition into the labour market, as well as the traditional link between graduation and subsequent labour market reward. 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). Holmes, L. (2001) Graduate employability: The graduate identity approach, Quality in Higher Education 7 (1): 111119. What this has shown is that graduates see the link between participation in HE and future returns to have been disrupted through mass HE. https://doi.org/10.1057/hep.2011.26. The end of work and its commentators, The Sociological Review 55 (1): 81103. Clarke, M. (2008) Understanding and managing employability in changing career contexts, Journal of European Industrial Training 32 (4): 258284. 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. Google Scholar. Department for Education (DFE). These concerns seem to be percolating down to graduates perceptions and strategies for adapting to the new positional competition. Bowman et al. Such graduates are therefore likely to shy away, or psychologically distance themselves, from what they perceive as particular cultural practices, values and protocols that are at odds with their existing ones. (eds.) 229240. French sociologist and criminologist Emile . (2010) Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education (The Browne Review), London: HMSO. This article attempts to provide a conceptual framework on employability skills of business graduates based on in-depth reviews. . 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. This paper will increase the understandings of graduate employability through interpreting its meaning and whose responsibility . One is the pre-existing level of social and cultural capital that these graduates possess, which opens up greater opportunities. consensus and industrial peace. Holden, R. and Hamblett, J. 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. Thetable below has been compiled by a range of UK-based companies (see company details at the end of this guide), and it lists the Top 10 Employability Skills which they look for in potential employees - that means you! Students in HE have become increasingly keener to position their formal HE more closely to the labour market. - 91.200.32.231. (2010) Overqualifcation, job satisfaction, and increasing dispersion in the returns to graduate education, Oxford Economic Papers 62 (4): 740763. Leadbetter, C. (2000) Living on Thin Air, London: Penguin. Roberts, K. (2009) Opportunity structures then and now, Journal of Education and Work 22 (5): 355368. 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. Lessons from a comparative survey, European Journal of Education 42 (1): 1134. 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 is most associated with functionalism. It is also considered as both a product (a set of skills that enable) and as a . Moreover, supply-side approaches tend to lay considerable responsibility onto HEIs for enhancing graduates employability. These theorists believe that the society and its equilibrium are based on the consensus or agreement of people. 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. However, the somewhat uneasy alliance between HE and workplaces is likely to account for mixed and variable outcomes from planned provision (Cranmer, 2006). 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. In the flexible and competitive UK context, employability also appears to be understood as a positional competition for jobs that are in scarce supply. (2000) Recruiting a graduate elite? Marginson, S. (2007) University mission and identity for a post-public era, Higher Education Research and Development 26 (1): 117131. Consensus Theory: the Basics According to consensus theories, for the most part society works because most people are successfully socialised into shared values through the family Graduate employability is a multifaceted concept considering the Sustainable Development Goals. 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. Their findings relate to earlier work on Careership (Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1997), itself influenced by Bourdieu's (1977) theories of capital and habitus. 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). Graduates clearly follow different employment pathways and embark upon a multifarious range of career routes, all leading to different experiences and outcomes. '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. A further policy response towards graduate employability has been around the enhancement of graduates skills, following the influential Dearing Report (1997). 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. Little, B. Graduate employability and skills development are also significant determinants for future career success. Continued training and lifelong learning is one way of staying fit in a job market context with shifting and ever-increasing employer demands. 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. Wilton, N. (2008) Business graduates and management jobs: An employability match made in heaven? Journal of Education and Work 21 (2): 143158. 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 . Compelling evidence on employers approaches to managing graduate talent (Brown and Hesketh, 2004) exposes this situation quite starkly. 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). It now appears no longer enough just to be a graduate, but instead an employable graduate. 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). 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. Consensus theory is a social theory that holds a particular political or economic system as a fair system, and that social change should take place within the social institutions provided by it .Consensus theory contrasts sharply with conflict theory, which holds that social change is only achieved through conflict.. 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). Chapter 1 1. At the same time, the seeming consensus regarding employability as an outcome with reference to employment or employment rates belies the complexity that surrounds the concept in the wider literature. 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. Individuals therefore need to proactively manage these risks (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002). 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. 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. Both a product ( a set of skills that enable ) and as a holmes L.... Have become increasingly keener to position their formal HE more closely to labour! ( 2008 ) business graduates based on in-depth reviews ) Living on Thin Air,:... 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