Even those students with strong intrinsic orientations around extra-curricula activities are aware of the need to translate these into marketable, value-added skills. 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. Slider with three articles shown per slide. Moreover, this is likely to shape their orientations towards the labour market, potentially affecting their overall trajectories and outcomes. Players are adept at responding to such competition, embarking upon strategies that will enable them to acquire and present the types of employability narratives that employers demand. 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. Chapter 2 is to refute the Classical theory of employment and unemployment on both empirical and logical grounds. 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. These concerns seem to be percolating down to graduates perceptions and strategies for adapting to the new positional competition. These risks include wrong payments to staff due to delay in flow of information in relation to staff retirement, death, transfers . 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. Young, M. (2009) Education, globalisation and the voice of knowledge, Journal of Education and Work 22 (3): 193204. This is most associated with functionalism. Teichler, U. 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. Little ( 2001 ) suggests, that it is a multi-dimensional construct, and there is a demand to separate between the factors relevant to the occupation and readying for work. 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. 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 . Employability also encompasses significant equity issues. The perspective gained much currency in the mid 20th century in the works of Harvard sociologist Talcott Parsons, for whom . Continued training and lifelong learning is one way of staying fit in a job market context with shifting and ever-increasing employer demands. Accordingly, there has been considerable government faith in the role of HE in meeting new economic imperatives. The problem of managing one's future employability is therefore seen largely as being up to the individual graduate. 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. Southampton Education School, University of Southampton, Building 32, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK, You can also search for this author in 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. Furlong, A. and Cartmel, F. (2005) Graduates from Disadvantaged Backgrounds: Early Labour Market Experiences, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. 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. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate the slides or the slide controller buttons at the end to navigate through each slide. x[[s~_1o:GC$rvFvuVJR+9E 4IV[uJUCF_nRj What this research has shown is that graduates anticipate the labour market to engender high risks and uncertainties (Moreau and Leathwood, 2006; Tomlinson, 2007) and are managing their expectations accordingly. Elias and Purcell's (2004) research has reported positive overall labour market outcomes in graduates early career trajectories 7 years on from graduation: in the main graduates manage to secure paid employment and enjoy comparatively higher earning than non-graduates. Skills and attributes approaches often require a stronger location in the changing nature and context of career development in more precarious labour markets, and to be more firmly built upon efficacious ways of sustaining employability narratives. Graduate employability and skills development are also significant determinants for future career success. According to conflict theory, employability represents an attempt to legitimate unequal opportunities in education, labour market at a time of growing income inequalities. Fugate and Kinicki (2008, p.9) describe career identity as "one's self-definition in the career context."Chope and Johnson (2008, p. 47) define career identity in a more scientific manner where they state that "career identity reflects the degree to which individuals define themselves in terms of a particular organisation, job, profession, or industry". 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. However, this raises significant issues over the extent to which graduates may be fully utilising their existing skills and credentials, and the extent to which they may be over-educated for many jobs that traditionally did not demand graduate-level qualifications. Over time, however, this traditional link between HE and the labour market has been ruptured. 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. (2006) The evolution of the boundaryless career concept: Examining the physical and psychological mobility, Journal of Vocational Behavior 69 (1): 1929. Employability is a key concept in higher education. 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. 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. Needless to say, critics of supply-side and skills-centred approaches have challenged the somewhat simplistic, descriptive and under-contextualised accounts of graduate skills. 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. develop the ideas in his General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936). 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. This is likely to result in significant inequalities between social groups, disadvantaging in particular those from lower socio-economic groups. https://doi.org/10.1057/hep.2011.26. Ball, S.J. The theory of employability can be difficult to identify; there can be many factors that contribute to the idea of being employable. These attributes, sometimes referred to as "employability skills," are thought to be . One is the pre-existing level of social and cultural capital that these graduates possess, which opens up greater opportunities. Englewood Cliffs . (2007) Does higher education matter? For some graduates, HE continues to be a clear route towards traditional middle-class employment and lifestyle; yet for others it may amount to little more than an opportunity cost. Brooks, R. and Everett, G. (2008) The predominance of work-based training in young graduates learning, Journal of Education and Work 21 (1): 6173. The past decade has witnessed a strong emphasis on employability skills, with the rationale that universities equip students with the skills demanded by employers. The transition from HE to work is perceived to be a potentially hazardous one that needs to be negotiated with more astute planning, preparation and foresight. 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. Furthermore, HEIs have increasingly become wedded to a range of internal and external market forces, with their activities becoming more attuned to the demands of both employers and the new student consumer (Naidoo and Jamieson, 2005; Marginson, 2007). This is further reflected in pay difference and breadth of career opportunities open to different genders. This insight, combined with a growing consensus that government should try to stabilize employment, has led to much (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 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. Consensus Theory The consensus theory is based on the propositions that technological innovation is the driving . 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). Google Scholar. Handbook of the Sociology of Education, New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 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.. These theorists believe that the society and its equilibrium are based on the consensus or agreement of people. Much of the graduate employability focus has been on supply-side responses towards enhancing graduates' skills for the labour market. HE has traditionally helped regulate the flow of skilled, professional and managerial workers. Under consensus theory the absence of conflict is seen as the equilibrium . Findings from previous research on employability from the demand side vary. Kelsall, R.K., Poole, A. and Kuhn, A. There is much continued debate over the way in which HE can contribute to graduates overall employment outcomes or, more sharply, their outputs and value-added in the labour market. Avoid the most common mistakes and prepare your manuscript for journal The label consensus theory of truth is currently attached to a number of otherwise very diverse philosophical perspectives. 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. 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). 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. The issue of graduate employability tends to rest within the increasing economisation of HE. 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 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. Archer, W. and Davison, J. In Europe, it would appear that HE is a more clearly defined agent for pre-work socialisation that more readily channels graduates to specific forms of employment. . However, these three inter-linkages have become increasingly problematic, not least through continued challenges to the value and legitimacy of professional knowledge and the credentials that have traditionally formed its bedrock (Young, 2009). Skills formally taught and acquired during university do not necessarily translate into skills utilised in graduate employment. Despite the limitations, the model is adopted to evaluate the role of education stakeholders in the Nigerian HE. Much of the graduate employability focus has been on supply-side responses towards enhancing graduates skills for the labour market. 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. (2010) Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education (The Browne Review), London: HMSO. Holden, R. and Hamblett, J. 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. 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). Employability is sometimes discussed in the context of the CareerEDGE model. (2003) The Future of Higher Education, London: HMSO. Traditionally, linkages between the knowledge and skills produced through universities and those necessitated by employers have tended to be quite flexible and open-ended. The downside of consensus theory is that it can be less dynamic and more static, which can lead to stagnation. 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. Applying a broad concept of 'employability' as an analytical framework, it considers the attributes and experiences of 190 job seekers (22% of the registered unemployed) in two contiguous travel-to-work areas (Wick and Sutherland) in the northern Highlands of Scotland. It further draws upon research that has explored the ways in which students and graduates construct their employability and begin to manage the transition from HE to work. This is particularly evident among the bottom-earning graduates who, as Green and Zhu show, do not necessarily attain better longer-term earnings than non-graduates. 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. In countries where training routes are less demarcated (for instance those with mass HE systems), these differences are less pronounced. Future research directions on graduate employability will need to explore the way in which graduates employability and career progression is managed both by graduates and employers during the early stages of their careers. Clarke, M. (2008) Understanding and managing employability in changing career contexts, Journal of European Industrial Training 32 (4): 258284. While mass HE potentially opens up opportunities for non-traditional graduates, new forms of cultural reproduction and social closure continue to empower some graduates more readily than others (Scott, 2005). 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. Department for Business Innovation and Skills (DIUS). 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. HE systems across the globe are evolving in conjunction with wider structural transformations in advanced, post-industrial capitalism (Brown and Lauder, 2009). Learning and employability are clearly supportive constructs but this relationship appears to be under represented and lacks clarity. Brooks, R. and Everett, G. (2009) Post-graduate reflections on the value of a degree, British Educational Research Journal 35 (3): 333349. Naidoo, R. and Jamieson, I. 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. 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 (2009) Over-education and the skills of UK graduates, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 172 (2): 307337. 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. 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. The strengths of consensus theory are that it is a more objective approach and that it is easier to achieve agreement. Similar to the Bowman et al. 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. Reviews for a period of 20 years between 1994 and 2013 have been assimilated and categorized into two propositions. Perhaps increasingly central to the changing dynamic between HE and the labour market has been the issue of graduate employability. 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. 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. 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. This is likely to be carried through into the labour market and further mediated by graduates ongoing experiences and interactions post-university. It was not uncommon for students participating, for example, in voluntary or community work to couch these activities in terms of developing teamworking and potential leadership skills. 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. Once characterised as a social elite (Kelsall et al., 1972), their status as occupants of an exclusive and well-preserved core of technocratic, professional and managerial jobs has been challenged by structural shifts in both HE and the economy. (2007) Round and round the houses: The Leitch review of skills, Local Economy 22 (2): 111117. The theory of employability can be difficult to identify; there can be many factors that contribute to the idea of being employable. Yet research has raised questions over employers overall effectiveness in marshalling graduates skills in the labour market (Brown and Hesketh, 2004; Morley and Aynsley, 2007). Expands the latter into positional conflict theory, which explains how the market for credentials is rigged and how individuals are ranked in it. For much of the past decade, governments have shown a commitment towards increasing the supply of graduates entering the economy, based on the technocratic principle that economic changes necessitates a more highly educated and flexible workforce (DFES, 2003) This rationale is largely predicated on increased economic demand for higher qualified individuals resulting from occupational changes, and whereby the majority of new job growth areas are at graduate level. 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 ) . 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. It will further show that while common trends are evident across national context, the HElabour market relationship is also subject to national variability. consensus theory of employability. This means that Keynes visualized employment/unemployment from the demand side of the model. . 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). Keynes's theory suggested that increases in government spending, tax cuts, and monetary expansion could be used to counteract depressions. 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