As Little and Archer (2010) argue, the relative looseness in the relationship between HE and the labour market has traditionally not presented problems for either graduates or employers, particularly in more flexible economies such as the United Kingdom. Cranmer, S. (2006) Enhancing graduate employability: Best intentions and mixed outcome, Studies in Higher Education 31 (2): 169184. 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. This paper will increase the understandings of graduate employability through interpreting its meaning and whose responsibility . 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. While in the main graduates command higher wages and are able to access wider labour market opportunities, the picture is a complex and variable one and reflects marked differences among graduates in their labour market returns and experiences. (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. If the occupational structure does not become sufficiently upgraded to accommodate the continued supply of graduates, then mismatches between graduates level of education and the demands of their jobs may ensue. PubMedGoogle Scholar, Tomlinson, M. Graduate Employability: A Review of Conceptual and Empirical Themes. yLy;l_L&. Such notions of economic change tend to be allied to human capital conceptualisations of education and economic growth (Becker, 1993). . Book 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. (2007) Does higher education matter? In such labour market contexts, HE regulates more clearly graduates access to particular occupations. Summary. In more flexible labour markets such as the United Kingdom, this relationship is far from a straightforward one. (2011) The Global Auction: The Broken Promises of Education, Jobs and Incomes, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Graduates appear to be valued on a range of broad skills, dispositions and performance-based activities that can be culturally mediated, both in the recruitment process and through the specific contexts of their early working lives. (2008) Higher Education at Work High Skills: High Value, London: HMSO. 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. It will further show that while common trends are evident across national context, the HElabour market relationship is also subject to national variability. Research into university graduates perceptions of the labour market illustrates that they are increasingly adopting individualised discourses (Moreau and Leathwood, 2006; Tomlinson, 2007; Taylor and Pick, 2008) around their future employment. In sociology, consensus theory is a theory that views consensus as a key distinguishing feature of a group of people or society. Critical approaches to labour market change have also tended to point to the structural inequalities within the labour market, reflected and reinforced through the ways in which different social groups approach both the educational and labour market fields. Argues that even employable people may fail to find jobs because of positional competition in the knowledge-driven economy. Teichler, U. Power and Whitty's research shows that graduates who experienced more elite earlier forms of education, and then attendance at prestigious universities, tend to occupy high-earning and high-reward occupations. Increasingly, individual graduates are no longer constrained by the old corporate structures that may have traditionally limited their occupational agility. A consensus theory is one which believes that the institutions of society are working together to maintain social cohesion and stability. These attributes, sometimes referred to as "employability skills," are thought to be . Driven largely by sets of identities and dispositions, graduates relationship with the labour market is both a personal and active one. It is also considered as both a product (a set of skills that enable) and as a . Chapter 2 is to refute the Classical theory of employment and unemployment on both empirical and logical grounds. Individuals therefore need to proactively manage these risks (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002). Both policymakers and employers have looked to exert a stronger influence on the HE agenda, particularly around its formal provisions, in order to ensure that graduates leaving HE are fit-for-purpose (Teichler, 1999, 2007; Harvey, 2000). Keynes's theory suggested that increases in government spending, tax cuts, and monetary expansion could be used to counteract depressions. Ball, S.J. Kupfer, A. 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. Personal characteristics, habits, and attitudes influence how you interact with others. Greenbank, P. (2007) Higher education and the graduate labour market: The Class Factor, Tertiary Education and Management 13 (4): 365376. (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. 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. 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. Google Scholar. On the other hand, less optimistic perspectives tend to portray contemporary employment as being both more intensive and precarious (Sennett, 2006). 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. 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. The inter-relationship between HE and the labour market has been considerably reshaped over time. They also include the professional skills that enable you to be successful in the workplace. 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). This study examines these two theories and makes competing predictions about the role of knowledge workers in moderating the . This has coincided with the movement towards more flexible labour markets, the overall contraction of management forms of employment, an increasing intensification in global competition for skilled labour and increased state-driven attempts to maximise the outputs of the university system (Harvey, 2000; Brown and Lauder, 2009). With increased individual expenditure, HE has literally become an investment and, as such, students may look to it for raising their absolute level of employability. 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. 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). Research Paper 1, University of West England & Warwick University, Warwick Institute for Employment Research. This is further likely to be mediated by national labour market structures in different national settings that differentially regulate the position and status of graduates in the economy. Much of this is likely to rest on graduates overall staying power, self-efficacy and tolerance to potentially destabilising experiences, be that as entrepreneurs, managers or researchers. 2023 Springer Nature Switzerland AG. Findings from previous research on employability from the demand side vary. Employable individuals are able to demonstrate a fundamental level of functioning or skill to perform a given job, or an employable individual's skills and experience . Tomlinson, M. (2008) The degree is not enough: Students perceptions of the role of higher education credentials for graduate work and employability, British Journal of Sociology of Education 29 (1): 4961. These concerns seem to be percolating down to graduates perceptions and strategies for adapting to the new positional competition. Brown, P., Lauder, H. and Ashton, D.N. Reviews for a period of 20 years between 1994 and 2013 have been assimilated and categorized into two propositions. Conflict theory in sociology. Consensus theory, on the other hand, looks at how individuals interact and how this can lead to agreement. Hinchliffe, G. and Jolly, A. <>stream Chevalier, A. and Lindley, J. Thus, a significant feature of research over the past decade has been the ways in which these changes have entered the collective and personal consciousnesses of students and graduates leaving HE. 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. Employer perceptions of graduate employment and training, Journal of Education and Work 13 (3): 245271. 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. 9n=#Ql\(~_e!Ul=>MyHv'Ez'uH7w2'ffP"M*5Lh?}s$k9Zw}*7-ni{?7d The challenge for graduate employees is to develop strategies that militate against such likelihoods. The shift to wards a knowledge econo my where k nowledge workers 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). (1999) Higher education policy and the world of work: Changing conditions and challenges, Higher Education Policy 12 (4): 285312. Reducing the system/structure down to the graduate labour market, there are parallels between Archer's work and consensus theory (Brown et al. Knight, P. and Yorke, M. (2004) Learning, Curriculum and Employability in Higher Education, London: Routledge Falmer. 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). (2009) Over-education and the skills of UK graduates, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 172 (2): 307337. 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. The subjective mediation of graduates employability is likely to have a significant role in how they align themselves and their expectations to the labour market. 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. research investigating employability from the employers' perspective has been qualitative in nature. Brown, Hesketh and Williams (2002) concur that the . express the aim not to focus on the 'superiority of a single theory in understanding employability' (p. 897), . 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. At another level, changes in the HE and labour market relationship map on to wider debates on the changing nature of employment more generally, and the effects this may have on the highly qualified. 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. Bowman et al. This is also the case for working-class students who were prone to pathologise their inability to secure employment, even though their outcomes are likely reflect structural inequalities. Roberts, K. (2009) Opportunity structures then and now, Journal of Education and Work 22 (5): 355368. 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. Becker, G. (1993) Human Capital: Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education (3rd edn), Chicago: Chicago University Press. Conversely, traditional middle-class graduates are more able to add value to their credentials and more adept at exploiting their pre-existing levels of cultural capital, social contacts and connections (Ball, 2003; Power and Whitty, 2006). They see society like a human body, where key institutions work like the body's organs to keep the society/body healthy and well.Social health means the same as social order, and is guaranteed when nearly everyone accepts the general moral values of their society. Department for Business Innovation and Skills (DIUS). Career choices tend to be made within specific action frames, or what they refer to as horizons for actions. Functionalism is a structural theory and posits that the social institutions and organization of society . 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. Employability also encompasses significant equity issues. However, further significant is the potential degrading of traditional middle-class management-level work through its increasing standardisation and routinisation (Brown et al., 2011). 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. French sociologist and criminologist Emile . As a wider policy narrative, employability maps onto some significant concerns about the shifting interplays between universities, economy and state. Consensus theories have a philosophical tradition dating . 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). 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. 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. . Various analysis of graduate returns (Brown and Hesketh, 2004; Green and Zhu, 2010) have highlighted the significant disparities that exist among graduates; in particular, some marked differences between the highest graduate earners and the rest. Chapter 1 1. 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. of employability has been subjected to little conceptual examination. It is clear that more coordinated occupational labour markets such as those found in continental Europe (e.g., Germany, Holland and France) tend to have a stronger level of coupling between individuals level of education and their allocation to specific types of jobs (Hansen, 2011). In the United Kingdom, as in other countries, clear differences have been reported on the class-cultural and academic profiles of graduates from different HEIs, along with different rates of graduate return (Archer et al., 2003; Furlong and Cartmel, 2005; Power and Whitty, 2006). Using Bourdieusian concepts of capital and field to outline the changing dynamic between HE and the labour market, Kupfer (2011) highlights the continued preponderance of structural and cultural inequalities through the existence of layered HE and labour market structures, operating in differentiated fields of power and resources. Individuals have to flexibly adapt to a job market that places increasing expectation and demands on them; in short, they need to continually maintain their employability. 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. Traditionally, linkages between the knowledge and skills produced through universities and those necessitated by employers have tended to be quite flexible and open-ended. 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. 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. 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. 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. Name one consensus theory and one conflict theory. Examines employability through the lenses of consensus theory and conflict theory. Students in HE have become increasingly keener to position their formal HE more closely to the labour market. Nabi, G., Holden, R. and Walmsley, A. Elias, P. and Purcell, K. (2004) The Earnings of Graduates in Their Early Careers: Researching Graduates Seven Years on. His theory is thus known as demand-oriented approach. 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. Employability. 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). This contrasts with more flexible liberal economies such as the United Kingdom, United States and Australia, characterised by more intensive competition, deregulation and lower employment tenure. In terms of social class influences on graduate labour market orientations, this is likely to work in both intuitive and reflexive ways. . Research on the more subjective, identity-based aspects of graduate employability also shows that graduates dispositions tend to derive from wider aspects of their educational and cultural biographies, and that these exercise some substantial influence on their propensities towards future employment. Hesketh, A.J. Holden, R. and Hamblett, J. Individual employability is defined as alumnus being able . Advancement in technological innovation requires the application of technical skills and knowledge; thus, attracting and retaining talented knowledge workers have become crucial for incumbent firms . Even employable people may fail to find Jobs because of positional competition in the workplace role... ) Learning, Curriculum and employability in Higher Education, London: HMSO of people society! Graduate employment and training, Journal of the Royal Statistical society 172 ( )... Yorke, M. graduate employability through interpreting its meaning and whose responsibility will the... 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