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. Boden, R. and Nedeva, M. (2010) Employing discourse: Universities and graduate employability, Journal of Education Policy 25 (1): 3754. In the flexible and competitive UK context, employability also appears to be understood as a positional competition for jobs that are in scarce supply. Southampton Education School, University of Southampton, Building 32, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK, You can also search for this author in 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). (1999) Higher education policy and the world of work: Changing conditions and challenges, Higher Education Policy 12 (4): 285312. It appears that students and graduates reflect upon their relationship with the labour market and what they might need to achieve their goals. volume25,pages 407431 (2012)Cite this article. Chapter 2 is to refute the Classical theory of employment and unemployment on both empirical and logical grounds. 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. However, new demands on HE from government, employers and students mean that continued pressures will be placed on HEIs for effectively preparing graduates for the labour market. (2009) Processes of middle-class reproduction in a graduate employment scheme, Journal of Education and Work 22 (1): 3553. This is perhaps further reflected in the degree of qualification-based and skills mismatches, often referred to as vertical mismatches. The theory of employability can be hard to place ; there can be many factors that contribute to the thought of being employable. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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). 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). Graduates are perceived as potential key players in the drive towards enhancing value-added products and services in an economy demanding stronger skill-sets and advanced technical knowledge. These concerns seem to be percolating down to graduates perceptions and strategies for adapting to the new positional competition. 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. The label consensus theory of truth is currently attached to a number of otherwise very diverse philosophical perspectives. What such research shows is that young graduates entering the labour market are acutely aware of the need to embark on strategies that will provide them with a positional gain in the competition for jobs. Some graduates early experience may be empowering and confirm existing dispositions towards career development; for others, their experiences may confirm ambivalent attitudes and reinforce their sense of dislocation. 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. Beck, U. and Beck-Gernsheim, E. (2002) Individualization, London: Sage. 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. The Routledge International Handbook of Sociology of Education, London: Routledge, pp. It seeks to explore shortcomings in the current employment of the concept of consensus, and in so doing to explain the continued relevance of conflict theory for sociological research. Clarke, M. (2008) Understanding and managing employability in changing career contexts, Journal of European Industrial Training 32 (4): 258284. 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. Brown, P., Lauder, H. and Ashton, D.N. Tomlinson's research also highlighted the propensity towards discourses of self-responsibilisation by students making the transitions to work. Johnston, B. Employer perceptions of graduate employment and training, Journal of Education and Work 13 (3): 245271. Hammer, Peter McIlveen, Soo Jeung Lee, Seungjung Kim & Jisun Jung, Higher Education Policy 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. 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 . (2007) Round and round the houses: The Leitch review of skills, Local Economy 22 (2): 111117. Englewood Cliffs . 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. Wider structural changes have potentially reinforced positional differences and differential outcomes between graduates, not least those from different class-cultural backgrounds. According to Keynes, the volume of employment in a country depends on the level of effective demand of the people for goods and services. Eurostat. Skills formally taught and acquired during university do not necessarily translate into skills utilised in graduate employment. 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.. This research highlighted that some had developed stronger identities and forms of identification with the labour market and specific future pathways. Employability is a product consisting of a specific set of skills, such as soft, hard, technical, and transferable. The consensus theory is based o n the propositions that technological innovation is the driving force of so cial change. The literature review suggested that there is a reasonable degree of consensus on the key skills. This paper analyses the barriers to work faced by long- and short-term unemployed people in remote rural labour markets. express the aim not to focus on the 'superiority of a single theory in understanding employability' (p. 897), . (1996) Higher Education and Work, London: Jessica Kingsley. Book 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. PubMedGoogle Scholar, Tomlinson, M. Graduate Employability: A Review of Conceptual and Empirical Themes. 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. 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. An example of this is the family. The theory of employability can be difficult to identify; there can be many factors that contribute to the idea of being employable. Consensus is the collective agreement of individuals. 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. However, conflict theorists view the . 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. X@vFuyfDdf(^vIm%h>IX, OIDq8 - Report to HEFCE by the Centre for Higher Education Research and Information. Part of Springer Nature. Consensus theories have a philosophical tradition dating . % Relatively high levels of personal investment are required to enhance one's employment profile and credentials, and to ensure that a return is made on one's investment in study. The different orientations students are developing appear to be derived from emerging identities and self-perceptions as future employees, as well as from wider biographical dimensions of the student. This is further reflected in pay difference and breadth of career opportunities open to different genders. 2023 Springer Nature Switzerland AG. 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). In section 6, an holistic framework for under- This is most associated with functionalism. For such students, future careers were potentially a significant source of personal meaning, providing a platform from which they could find fulfilment, self-expression and a credible adult identity. Moreover, this may well influence the ways in which they understand and attempt to manage their future employability. Over time, however, this traditional link between HE and the labour market has been ruptured. Little, B. 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). Learning and employability are clearly supportive constructs but this relationship appears to be under represented and lacks clarity. https://doi.org/10.1057/hep.2011.26. 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). 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. Collins, R. (2000) Comparative and Historical Patterns of Education, in M. Hallinan (ed.) 'employability' is currently used by many policy-makers, as shorthand for 'the individ-ual's employability skills', represents a 'narrow' usage of the concept and contrast this with attempts to arrive at a more broadly dened concept of employability. His theory is thus known as demand-oriented approach. Hodkinson, P. and Sparkes, A.C. (1997) Careership: A sociological theory of career decision-making, British Journal of Sociology of Education 18 (1): 2944. Theory could be viewed as a coherent group of assumptions or propositions put forth to . This clearly implies that graduates expect their employability management to be an ongoing project throughout different stages of their careers. Chapter 1 1. 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". Hinchliffe, G. and Jolly, A. Wolf, A. 213240. The paper considers the wider context of higher education (HE) and labour market change, and the policy thinking towards graduate employability. Further research from the UK authorities stated that: "Our higher instruction system is a great plus, both for persons and the state. . 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 . The challenge, it seems, is for graduates to become adept at reading these signals and reframing both their expectations and behaviours. 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.) The underlying assumption of this view is that the Conflict theory in sociology. 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). Purpose. Personal characteristics, habits, and attitudes influence how you interact with others. This article attempts to provide a conceptual framework on employability skills of business graduates based on in-depth reviews. Graduate employability is a multifaceted concept considering the Sustainable Development Goals. Employability also encompasses significant equity issues. 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. Traditionally, linkages between the knowledge and skills produced through universities and those necessitated by employers have tended to be quite flexible and open-ended. Much of the graduate employability focus has been on supply-side responses towards enhancing graduates skills for the labour market. In countries where training routes are less demarcated (for instance those with mass HE systems), these differences are less pronounced. Archer, W. and Davison, J. 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 paper will increase the understandings of graduate employability through interpreting its meaning and whose responsibility . It would appear from the various research that graduates emerging labour market identities are linked to other forms of identity, not least those relating to social background, gender and ethnicity (Archer et al., 2003; Reay et al., 2006; Moreau and Leathwood, 2006; Kirton, 2009) This itself raises substantial issues over the way in which different types of graduate leaving mass HE understand and articulate the link between their participation in HE and future activities in the labour market. Graduate Employability has come to mean many different things. Historically, the majority of employability research and practice pertained to vocational rehabilitation or to the attractiveness and selection of job candidates. Research has tended to reveal a mixed picture on graduates and their position in the labour market (Brown and Hesketh, 2004; Elias and Purcell, 2004; Green and Zhu, 2010). In sociological debates, consensus theory has been seen as in opposition to conflict theory. poststructuralism, Positional Conflict Theory as well as liberalhumanist thought. 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. 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. Naidoo, R. and Jamieson, I. The consensus theory of employability states that enhancing graduates' employability and advancing their careers requires improving their human capital, specically their skill development (Selvadurai et al.2012). Barrie, S. (2006) Understanding what we mean by generic attributes of graduates, Higher Education 51 (2): 215241. , H. and Ashton, D.N houses: the Leitch review of skills, such as soft hard., E. 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