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. Book 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. 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. '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. (2010) Higher Education Funding for Academic Years 200910 and 201011 Including New Student Entrants, Bristol: HEFCE. 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. 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. Furthermore, as Bridgstock (2009) has highlighted, generic skills discourses often fail to engage with more germane understandings of the actual career-salient skills graduates genuinely need to navigate through early career stages. This has been driven mainly by a number of key structural changes both to higher education institutions (HEIs) and in the nature of the economy. consensus and industrial peace. develop the ideas in his General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936). (2007) Round and round the houses: The Leitch review of skills, Local Economy 22 (2): 111117. Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). The theory of employability can be difficult to identify; there can be many factors that contribute to the idea of being employable. 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). Wolf, A. 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. (2004) The Mismangement of Talent: Employability and Jobs in the Knowledge-Based Economy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar. 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. As Brown et al. and Soskice, D.W. (2001) Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage, Oxford: Oxford University Press. It appears that the wider educational profile of the graduate is likely to have a significant bearing on their future labour market outcomes. Becker, G. (1993) Human Capital: Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education (3rd edn), Chicago: Chicago University Press. These two theories are usually spoken of as in opposition based on their arguments. Consensus Theory The consensus theory is based on the propositions that technological innovation is the driving . Nabi, G., Holden, R. and Walmsley, A. there is insufficient rigour in applying the framework to managerial, organisational and strategic issues. This is likely to be carried through into the labour market and further mediated by graduates ongoing experiences and interactions post-university. 2023 Springer Nature Switzerland AG. Beck, U. and Beck-Gernsheim, E. (2002) Individualization, London: Sage. Career choices tend to be made within specific action frames, or what they refer to as horizons for actions. A consensus theory approach sees sport as a source of collective harmony, a way of binding people together in a shared experience. The simultaneous decoupling and tightening in the HElabour market relationship therefore appears to have affected the regulation of graduates into specific labour market positions and their transitions more generally. 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. Hammer, Peter McIlveen, Soo Jeung Lee, Seungjung Kim & Jisun Jung, Higher Education Policy The past decade has witnessed a strong emphasis on employability skills, with the rationale that universities equip students with the skills demanded by employers. While some graduates have acquired and drawn upon specialised skill-sets, many have undertaken employment pathways that are only tangential to what they have studied. In effect, market rules dominate. While some of these graduates appear to be using their extra studies as a platform for extending their potential career scope, for others it is additional time away from the job market and can potentially confirm that sense of ambivalence towards it. 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. The key to accessing desired forms of employment is achieving a positional advantage over other graduates with similar academic and class-cultural profiles. Brown, P. and Lauder, H. (2009) Economic Globalisation, Skill Formation and The Consequences for Higher Education, in S. Ball, M. Apple and L. Gandin (eds.) 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). These negotiations continue well into graduates working lives, as they continue to strive towards establishing credible work identities. For Beck and Beck-Germsheim (2002), processes of institutionalised individualisation mean that the labour market effectively becomes a motor for individualisation, in that responsibility for economic outcomes is transferred away from work organisations and onto individuals. 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. Brooks, R. and Everett, G. (2008) The predominance of work-based training in young graduates learning, Journal of Education and Work 21 (1): 6173. These attributes, sometimes referred to as "employability skills," are thought to be . (2008) Graduate development in European employment: Issues and contradictions, Education and Training 50 (5): 379390. In contrast to conflict theories, consensus theories are those that see people in society as having shared interests and society functioning on the basis of there being broad consensus on its norms and values. (eds.) Johnston, B. *1*.J\ Southampton Education School, University of Southampton, Building 32, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK, You can also search for this author in Examines employability through the lenses of consensus theory and conflict theory. Google Scholar. 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. 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. (2009) Processes of middle-class reproduction in a graduate employment scheme, Journal of Education and Work 22 (1): 3553. Keynesian economics was developed by the British economist John Maynard Keynes . 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 consensus theory is based o n the propositions that technological innovation is the driving force of so cial change. 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. In all cases, as these researchers illustrate, narrow checklists of skills appear to play little part in informing employers recruitment decisions, nor in determining graduates employment outcomes. 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). Leadbetter, C. (2000) Living on Thin Air, London: Penguin. 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. Roberts, K. (2009) Opportunity structures then and now, Journal of Education and Work 22 (5): 355368. Brooks, R. and Everett, G. (2009) Post-graduate reflections on the value of a degree, British Educational Research Journal 35 (3): 333349. For graduates, the process of realising labour market goals, of becoming a legitimate and valued employee, is a continual negotiation and involves continual identity work. The problem of managing one's future employability is therefore seen largely as being up to the individual graduate. 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. 6 0 obj These concerns seem to be percolating down to graduates perceptions and strategies for adapting to the new positional competition. Dearing, R. (1997) The Dearing Report: Report for the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education: Higher Education in the Learning Society, London: HMSO. Variations in graduates labour market returns appear to be influenced by a range of factors, framing the way graduates construct their employability. Handbook of the Sociology of Education, New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. For Brown and Hesketh (2004), however, graduates respond differently according to their existing values, beliefs and understandings. The consensus theory of employment argues that technological innovation is the driving force of social change (Drucker, 1993, Kerr, 1973). In countries where training routes are less demarcated (for instance those with mass HE systems), these differences are less pronounced. 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). Increasingly, individual graduates are no longer constrained by the old corporate structures that may have traditionally limited their occupational agility. 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. The review has also highlighted the contested terrain around which debates on graduates employability and its development take place. 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. Under consensus theory the absence of conflict is seen as the equilibrium . Graduate Employability has come to mean many different things. Employer perceptions of graduate employment and training, Journal of Education and Work 13 (3): 245271. 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. In sociology, consensus theory is a theory that views consensus as a key distinguishing feature of a group of people or society. The problem has been largely attributable to universities focusing too rigidly on academically orientated provision and pedagogy, and not enough on applied learning and functional skills. 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. (2003) Higher Education and Social Class: Issues of Exclusion and Inclusion, London: Routledge. x[[s~_1o:GC$rvFvuVJR+9E 4IV[uJUCF_nRj (2010) Education and the employability of graduates: Will Bologna make a difference? European Educational Research Journal 9 (1): 3244. The Routledge International Handbook of Sociology of Education, London: Routledge, pp. Skills formally taught and acquired during university do not necessarily translate into skills utilised in graduate employment. Bowers-Brown, T. and Harvey, L. (2004) Are there too many graduates in the UK? Industry and Higher Education 18 (4): 243254. However, other research on the graduate labour market points to a variable picture with significant variations between different types of graduates. 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. Cardiff School of Social Sciences Working Paper 118. As such, these identities and dispositions are likely to shape graduates action frames, including their decisions to embark upon various career routes. of employability has been subjected to little conceptual examination. 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. This means that Keynes visualized employment/unemployment from the demand side of the model. (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. Employability depends on your knowledge, skills and attitudes, how you use those assets, and how you present them to employers. An example of this is the family. 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). According to Benson, Morgan and Fillipaios (2013) social skills and inherent personality traits are deemed as more important than technical skills or a poststructuralism, Positional Conflict Theory as well as liberalhumanist thought. Hodkinson, P. and Sparkes, A.C. (1997) Careership: A sociological theory of career decision-making, British Journal of Sociology of Education 18 (1): 2944. 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. Bridgstock, R. (2009) The graduate attributes weve overlooked: Enhancing graduate employability through career management skills, Higher Education Research and Development 28 (1): 3144. While consensus theory emphasizes cooperation and shared values, conflict theory emphasizes power dynamics and ongoing struggles for social change. This paper analyses the barriers to work faced by long- and short-term unemployed people in remote rural labour markets. 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. This paper draws largely from UK-based research and analysis, but also relates this to existing research and data at an international level. Perhaps increasingly central to the changing dynamic between HE and the labour market has been the issue of graduate employability. Marginson, S. (2007) University mission and identity for a post-public era, Higher Education Research and Development 26 (1): 117131. (2003) and Reay et al. Teichler, U. Moreau, M.P. Hinchliffe, G. and Jolly, A. Policy responses have tended to be supply-side focused, emphasising the role of HEIs for better equipping graduates for the challenges of the labour market. Employability is sometimes discussed in the context of the CareerEDGE model. Research done over the past decade has highlighted the increasing pressures anticipated and experienced by graduates seeking well-paid and graduate-level forms of employment. Employers propensities towards recruiting specific types of graduates perhaps reflects deep-seated issues stemming from more transactional, cost-led and short-term approaches to developing human resources (Warhurst, 2008). 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. (1972) Graduates: The Sociology of an Elite, London: Methuen. Indeed, there appears a need for further research on the overall management of graduate careers over the longer-term course of their careers. Morley (2001) however states that employability is not just about . This is most associated with functionalism. 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. This also extends to subject areas where there has been a traditionally closer link between the curricula content and specific job areas (Wilton, 2008; Rae, 2007). 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