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. (2010) Overqualifcation, job satisfaction, and increasing dispersion in the returns to graduate education, Oxford Economic Papers 62 (4): 740763. 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. Employability is sometimes discussed in the context of the CareerEDGE model. On the other hand, less optimistic perspectives tend to portray contemporary employment as being both more intensive and precarious (Sennett, 2006). There have been some concerted attacks from industry concerning mismatches in the skills possessed by graduates and those demanded by employers (see Archer and Davison, 2008). Tomlinson's research also highlighted the propensity towards discourses of self-responsibilisation by students making the transitions to work. 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. Examines employability through the lenses of consensus theory and conflict theory. Thus, graduates who are confined to non-graduate occupations, or even new forms of employment that do not necessitate degree-level study, may find themselves struggling to achieve equitable returns. Consensus Theory. This study examines these two theories and makes competing predictions about the role of knowledge workers in moderating the . 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 the context of a knowledge economy, consensus theory advocates that knowledge, skills and innovation are the driving factors of our society. editors. Nabi, G., Holden, R. and Walmsley, A. 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. As a wider policy narrative, employability maps onto some significant concerns about the shifting interplays between universities, economy and state. Questions continued to be posed over the specific role of HE in regulating skilled labour, and the overall matching of the supply of graduates leaving HE to their actual economic demand and utility (Bowers-Brown and Harvey, 2004). Bowman, H., Colley, H. and Hodkinson, P. (2005) Employability and Career Progression of Fulltime UK Masters Students: Final Report for the Higher Education Careers Services Unit, Leeds: Lifelong Learning Institute. Greenbank, P. (2007) Higher education and the graduate labour market: The Class Factor, Tertiary Education and Management 13 (4): 365376. 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. The challenge, it seems, is for graduates to become adept at reading these signals and reframing both their expectations and behaviours. 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. Morley (2001) however states that employability . The inter-relationship between HE and the labour market has been considerably reshaped over time. 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. 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 . 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. conventional / consensus perspective that places . This was a model developed by Lorraine Dacre Pool and Peter Sewell in 2007 which identifies five essential elements that aid employability: Career Development Learning: the knowledge, skills and experience to help people manage and develop their careers. Dearing, R. (1997) The Dearing Report: Report for the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education: Higher Education in the Learning Society, London: HMSO. 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. This research highlighted that some had developed stronger identities and forms of identification with the labour market and specific future pathways. (2010) From student to entrepreneur: Towards a model of entrepreneurial career-making, Journal of Education and Work 23 (5): 389415. They nevertheless remain committed to HE as a key economic driver, although with a new emphasis on further rationalising the system through cutting-back university services, stricter prioritisation of funding allocation and higher levels of student financial contribution towards HE through the lifting of the threshold of university fee contribution (DFE, 2010). 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". More positive accounts of graduates labour market outcomes tend to support the notion of HE as a positive investment that leads to favourable returns. https://doi.org/10.1057/hep.2011.26. Universities have typically been charged with failing to instil in graduates the appropriate skills and dispositions that enable them to add value to the labour market. Strangleman, T. (2007) The nostalgia for the permanence of work? 6 0 obj 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. Google Scholar. 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. 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. Their findings relate to earlier work on Careership (Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1997), itself influenced by Bourdieu's (1977) theories of capital and habitus. 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. 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. Part of Springer Nature. Throughout, the paper explores some of the dominant conceptual themes informing discussion and research on graduate employability, in particular human capital, skills, social reproduction, positional conflict and identity. It also introduces 'positional conflict theory' as a way of 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). Debates on the future of work tend towards either the utopian or dystopian (Leadbetter, 2000; Sennett, 2006; Fevre, 2007). Such issues may be compounded by a policy climate of heavy central planning and target-setting around the coordination of skills-based education and training. Under consensus theory the absence of conflict is seen as the equilibrium . These theorists believe that the society and its equilibrium are based on the consensus or agreement of people. 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. Career choices tend to be made within specific action frames, or what they refer to as horizons for actions. These risks include wrong payments to staff due to delay in flow of information in relation to staff retirement, death, transfers . Increasingly, individual graduates are no longer constrained by the old corporate structures that may have traditionally limited their occupational agility. 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. The employability and labour market returns of graduates also appears to have a strong international dimension to it, given that different national economies regulate the relationship between HE and labour market entry differently (Teichler, 2007). In such labour market contexts, HE regulates more clearly graduates access to particular occupations. . 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). (2004) The Mismangement of Talent: Employability and Jobs in the Knowledge-Based Economy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 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). Theory could be viewed as a coherent group of assumptions or propositions put forth to . (2010) Education and the employability of graduates: Will Bologna make a difference? European Educational Research Journal 9 (1): 3244. Bowers-Brown, T. and Harvey, L. (2004) Are there too many graduates in the UK? Industry and Higher Education 18 (4): 243254. Brown and Hesketh's (2004) research has clearly shown the competitive pressures experienced by graduates in pursuit of tough-entry and sought-after employment, and some of the measures they take to meet the anticipated recruitment criteria of employers. 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. However, while notions of graduate skills, competencies and attributes are used inter-changeably, they often convey different things to different people and definitions are not always likely to be shared among employers, university teachers and graduates themselves (Knight and Yorke, 2004; Barrie, 2006). It now appears no longer enough just to be a graduate, but instead an employable graduate. 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. 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. 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). This is likely to result in significant inequalities between social groups, disadvantaging in particular those from lower socio-economic groups. It draws upon various studies to highlight the different labour market perceptions, experiences and outcomes of graduates in the United Kingdom and other national contexts. The theory of employability can be difficult to identify; there can be many factors that contribute to the idea of being employable. 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. 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. In countries where training routes are less demarcated (for instance those with mass HE systems), these differences are less pronounced. Consensus theory, on the other hand, looks at how individuals interact and how this can lead to agreement. (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. 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. Elias, P. and Purcell, K. (2004) The Earnings of Graduates in Their Early Careers: Researching Graduates Seven Years on. The shift to wards a knowledge econo my where k nowledge workers VuE*ce!\S&|3>}x`nbC_Y*o0HIS?vV7?& wociJZWM_ dBu\;QoU{=A*U[1?!q+ 5I3O)j`u_S ^bA0({{9O?-#$ 3? 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. The underlying assumption of this view is that the Much of the graduate employability focus has been on supply-side responses towards enhancing graduates' skills for the labour market. Indeed, there appears a need for further research on the overall management of graduate careers over the longer-term course of their careers. It is also considered as both a product (a set of skills that enable) and as a . The decline of the established graduate career trajectory has somewhat disrupted the traditional link between HE, graduate credentials and occupational rewards (Ainley, 1994; Brown and Hesketh, 2004). . Taylor, J. and Pick, D. (2008) The work orientations of Australian university students, Journal of Education and Work 21 (5): 405421. Bowman et al. 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. This appears to be a response to increased competition and flexibility in the labour market, reflecting an awareness that their longer-term career trajectories are less likely to follow stable or certain pathways. 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). The New Right argues that liberal left politicians and welfare policies have undermined the . Based on society's agreement - or consensus - on our shared norms and values, individuals are happy to stick to the rules for the sake of the greater good.Ultimately, this helps us achieve social order and stability. A consensus theory approach sees sport as a source of collective harmony, a way of binding people together in a shared experience. 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). Department for Education Skills (DFES). Chapter 2 is to refute the Classical theory of employment and unemployment on both empirical and logical grounds. x[[s~_1o:GC$rvFvuVJR+9E 4IV[uJUCF_nRj Hodkinson, P. and Sparkes, A.C. (1997) Careership: A sociological theory of career decision-making, British Journal of Sociology of Education 18 (1): 2944. 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. It appears that students and graduates reflect upon their relationship with the labour market and what they might need to achieve their goals. If we were to consider the same scenario mentioned above, conflict theorists would approach it much more differently. Wilton, N. (2008) Business graduates and management jobs: An employability match made in heaven? Journal of Education and Work 21 (2): 143158. 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. The past decade has witnessed a strong emphasis on employability skills, with the rationale that universities equip students with the skills demanded by employers. 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 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. % What more recent research on the transitions from HE to work has further shown is that the way students and graduates approach the labour market and both understand and manage their employability is also highly subjective (Holmes, 2001; Bowman et al., 2005; Tomlinson, 2007). Morley (2001) however states that employability . The theory of employability can be hard to place ; there can be many factors that contribute to the thought of being employable. Collins, R. (2000) Comparative and Historical Patterns of Education, in M. Hallinan (ed.) However despite there being different concepts to analyse the make up of "employability", the consensus of these is that there are three key qualities when assessing the employability of graduates: These . 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. Department for Education (DFE). (2007) The transition from higher education into work: Tales of cohesion and fragmentation, Education + Training 49 (7): 516585. 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. Graduates clearly follow different employment pathways and embark upon a multifarious range of career routes, all leading to different experiences and outcomes. consensus theory of employability. 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). These concerns may further feed into students approaches to HE more generally, increasingly characterised by more instrumental, consumer-driven and acquisitive learning approaches (Naidoo and Jamieson, 2005). (2009) Over-education and the skills of UK graduates, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 172 (2): 307337. yLy;l_L&. In the United Kingdom, for example, state commitment to public financing of HE has declined; although paradoxically, state continues to exert pressures on the system to enhance its outputs, quality and overall market responsiveness (DFE, 2010). (2011) Graduate identity and employability, British Educational Research Journal 37 (4): 563584. Harvey, L. 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