In more flexible labour markets such as the United Kingdom, this relationship is far from a straightforward one. 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). Marginson, S. (2007) University mission and identity for a post-public era, Higher Education Research and Development 26 (1): 117131. 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. His theory is thus known as demand-oriented approach. editors. 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). (2003) and Reay et al. of employability has been subjected to little conceptual examination. 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). Teichler, U. Johnston, B. 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. 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. Further research from the UK authorities stated that: "Our higher instruction system is a great plus, both for persons and the state. Brennan, J. and Tang, W. (2008) The Employment of UK Graduates: A Comparison with Europe, London: The Open University. 2.2.2 Consensus Theory of Employability The consensus view of employability is rooted in a particular world-view which resonates with many of the core tenets of neo-liberalism. Savage, M. (2003) A new class paradigm? British Journal of Sociology of Education 24 (4): 535541. 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. However, there are concerns that the shift towards mass HE and, more recently, more whole-scale market-driven reforms may be intensifying class-cultural divisions in both access to specific forms of HE experience and subsequent economic outcomes in the labour market (Reay et al., 2006; Strathdee, 2011). 9n=#Ql\(~_e!Ul=>MyHv'Ez'uH7w2'ffP"M*5Lh?}s$k9Zw}*7-ni{?7d Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Taylor, J. and Pick, D. (2008) The work orientations of Australian university students, Journal of Education and Work 21 (5): 405421. 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). Keynesian economics was developed by the British economist John Maynard Keynes . 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. 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.. (2011) Towards a theoretical framework for the comparative understanding of globalisation, higher education, the labour market and inequality, Journal of Education and Work 24 (1): 185207. This study examines these two theories and makes competing predictions about the role of knowledge workers in moderating the . The functionalism perspective is a paradigm influenced by American sociology from roughly the 1930s to the 1960s, although its origins lay in the work of the French sociologist Emile Durkheim, writing at the end of the 19th century. Green, F. and Zhu, Y. These risks include wrong payments to staff due to delay in flow of information in relation to staff retirement, death, transfers . The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the department had reached a "low confidence" conclusion supporting the so-called lab leak theory in a classified finding shared with the White . 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. This research highlighted that some had developed stronger identities and forms of identification with the labour market and specific future pathways. 2023 Springer Nature Switzerland AG. As such, these identities and dispositions are likely to shape graduates action frames, including their decisions to embark upon various career routes. Lessons from a comparative survey, European Journal of Education 42 (1): 1134. Graduate Employability: A Review of Conceptual and Empirical Themes, Managing the link between higher education and the labour market: perceptions of graduates in Greece and Cyprus, Graduate employability as a professional proto-jurisdiction in higher education, Employability-related activities beyond the curriculum: how participation and impact vary across diverse student cohorts, Employability in context: graduate employabilityattributes expected by employers in regional Vietnam and implications for career guidance. Google Scholar. This is further reflected in pay difference and breadth of career opportunities open to different genders. It appears that the wider educational profile of the graduate is likely to have a significant bearing on their future labour market outcomes. Skills formally taught and acquired during university do not necessarily translate into skills utilised in graduate employment. Non-traditional graduates or new recruits to the middle classes may be less skilled at reading the changing demands of employers (Savage, 2003; Reay et al., 2006). Archer, W. and Davison, J. Eurostat. Moreover, in the context of flexible and competitive globalisation, the highly educated may find themselves forming part of an increasingly disenfranchised new middle class, continually at the mercy of agile, cost-driven flows in skilled labour, and in competition with contemporaries from newly emerging economies. Employability depends on your knowledge, skills and attitudes, how you use those assets, and how you present them to employers. Beck, U. and Beck-Gernsheim, E. (2002) Individualization, London: Sage. 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. Again, graduates respond to the challenges of increasing flexibility, individualisation and positional competition in different ways. Edvardsson Stiwne, E. and Alves, M.G. The final aim is to logically distinguish . (2003) The shape of research in the field of higher education and graduate employment: Some issues, Studies in Higher Education 28 (4): 413426. This insight, combined with a growing consensus that government should try to stabilize employment, has led to much 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. In the context of a knowledge economy, consensus theory advocates that knowledge, skills and innovation are the driving factors of our society. 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? 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 more recent policy in the United Kingdom towards raising fee levels has coincided with an economic downturn, generating concerns over the value and returns of a university degree. 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. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of some of the dominant empirical and conceptual themes in the area of graduate employment and employability over the past decade. 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). Cardiff School of Social Sciences Working Paper 118. Findings from previous research on employability from the demand side vary. yLy;l_L&. PubMedGoogle Scholar, Tomlinson, M. Graduate Employability: A Review of Conceptual and Empirical Themes. Wilton, N. (2008) Business graduates and management jobs: An employability match made in heaven? Journal of Education and Work 21 (2): 143158. Greenbank, P. (2007) Higher education and the graduate labour market: The Class Factor, Tertiary Education and Management 13 (4): 365376. Such changes have inevitably led to questions over HE's role in meeting the needs of both the wider labour market and graduates, concerns that have largely emanated from the corporate world (Morley and Aynsley, 2007; Boden and Nedeva, 2010). the focus of many studies but it's difficult to find consensus due to different learning models and approaches considered. They also reported quite high levels of satisfaction among graduates on their perceived utility of their formal and informal university experiences. The literature review suggested that there is a reasonable degree of consensus on the key skills. Value consensus assumes that the norms and values of society are generally agreed and that social life is based on co-operation rather than conflict. Roberts, K. (2009) Opportunity structures then and now, Journal of Education and Work 22 (5): 355368. Morley ( 2001 ) nevertheless states that . 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. The concerns that have been well documented within the non-graduate youth labour market (Roberts, 2009) are also clearly resonating with the highly qualified. This will largely shape how graduates perceive the linkage between their higher educational qualification and their future returns. 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. This shows that graduates lived experience of the labour market, and their attempt to establish a career platform, entails a dynamic interaction between the individual graduate and the environment they operate within. While consensus theory emphasizes cooperation and shared values, conflict theory emphasizes power dynamics and ongoing struggles for social change. . 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. Moreau and Leathwood reported strong tendencies for graduates to attribute their labour market outcomes and success towards personal attributes and qualities as much as the structure of available opportunities. 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. 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. The consensus theory of employment argues that technological innovation is the driving force of social change (Drucker, 1993, Kerr, 1973). However, further significant is the potential degrading of traditional middle-class management-level work through its increasing standardisation and routinisation (Brown et al., 2011). 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. 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. 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. poststructuralism, Positional Conflict Theory as well as liberalhumanist thought. The purpose of this article is to show that the way employability is typically defined in official statements is seriously flawed because it ignores what will be called the 'duality of employability'. This is most associated with functionalism. Similar to the Bowman et al. The perspective gained much currency in the mid 20th century in the works of Harvard sociologist Talcott Parsons, for whom . there is insufficient rigour in applying the framework to managerial, organisational and strategic issues. There has been perhaps an increasing government realisation that future job growth is likely to be halted for the immediate future, no longer warranting the programme of expansion intended by the previous government. 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. 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. Overall, consensus theory is a useful perspective for understanding the role of crime in society and the ways in which it serves as a means of defining and enforcing social norms and values. Employability skills include the soft skills that allow you to work well with others, apply knowledge to solve problems, and to fit into any work environment. 2003). (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. 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. Yet the position of graduates in the economy remains contested and open to a range of competing interpretations. Less positively, their research exposed gender disparities gap in both pay and the types of occupations graduates work within. Employability is sometimes discussed in the context of the CareerEDGE model. The paper explores some of the conceptual notions that have informed understandings of graduate employability, and argues for a broader understanding of employability than that offered by policymakers. Their findings relate to earlier work on Careership (Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1997), itself influenced by Bourdieu's (1977) theories of capital and habitus. Mass HE may therefore be perpetuating the types of structural inequalities it was intended to alleviate. . 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. 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. 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 . Reviews for a period of 20 years between 1994 and 2013 have been assimilated and categorized into two propositions. They construct their individual employability in a relative and subjective manner. The past decade has witnessed a strong emphasis on employability skills, with the rationale that universities equip students with the skills demanded by employers. Longitudinal research on graduates transitions to the labour market (Holden and Hamblett, 2007; Nabi et al., 2010) also illustrates that graduates initial experiences of the labour market can confirm or disrupt emerging work-related identities. Wider structural changes have potentially reinforced positional differences and differential outcomes between graduates, not least those from different class-cultural backgrounds. Prior to this, Harvey ( 2001 ) has defined employability in assorted ways from single and institutional positions. Boden, R. and Nedeva, M. (2010) Employing discourse: Universities and graduate employability, Journal of Education Policy 25 (1): 3754. 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. What has perhaps been characteristic of more recent policy discourses has been the strong emphasis on harnessing HE's activities to meet changing economic demands. This may well confirm emerging perceptions of their own career progression and what they need to do to enhance it. - 91.200.32.231. (2008) Higher Education at Work High Skills: High Value, London: HMSO. 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