Even those students with strong intrinsic orientations around extra-curricula activities are aware of the need to translate these into marketable, value-added skills. volume25,pages 407431 (2012)Cite this article. (2008) Higher Education at Work High Skills: High Value, London: HMSO. Expands the latter into positional conflict theory, which explains how the market for credentials is rigged and how individuals are ranked in it. This is then linked to research that has examined the way in which students and graduates are managing the transition into the labour market. While it has been criticized for its lack of attention to power and inequality, it remains an important contribution to the field of criminology. known as "Graduate Employability" (Harvey 2003; Yorke 2006). Brennan, J. and Tang, W. (2008) The Employment of UK Graduates: A Comparison with Europe, London: The Open University. Article The Routledge International Handbook of Sociology of Education, London: Routledge, pp. Yet at a time when stakes within the labour market have risen, graduates are likely to demand that this link becomes a more tangible one. . The theory of employability can be difficult to identify; there can be many factors that contribute to the idea of being employable. Arthur, M. and Sullivan, S.E. In effect, individuals can no longer rely on their existing educational and labour market profiles for shaping their longer-term career progression. 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). Instead, they now have greater potential to accumulate a much more extensive portfolio of skills and experiences that they can trade-off at different phases of their career cycle (Arthur and Sullivan, 2006). Prior to this, Harvey ( 2001 ) has defined employability in assorted ways from single and institutional positions. The theory rests on the assumption that Conservative governments in this time period made an accommodation with the social democratic policy . These theorists believe that the society and its equilibrium are based on the consensus or agreement of people. 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. 229240. 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. One particular consequence of a massified, differentiated HE is therefore likely to be increased discrimination between different types of graduates. Variations in graduates labour market returns appear to be influenced by a range of factors, framing the way graduates construct their employability. Knight, P. and Yorke, M. (2004) Learning, Curriculum and Employability in Higher Education, London: Routledge Falmer. Bowman et al. Graduates in different occupations were shown to be drawing upon particular graduate skill-sets, be that occupation-specific expertise, managerial decision-making skills, and interactive, communication-based competences. Kirton, G. (2009) Career plans and aspirations of recent black and minority ethnic business graduates, Work, Employment and Society 23 (1): 1229. (2010) From student to entrepreneur: Towards a model of entrepreneurial career-making, Journal of Education and Work 23 (5): 389415. These changes have added increasing complexities to graduates transition into the labour market, as well as the traditional link between graduation and subsequent labour market reward. 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 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. Employability also encompasses significant equity issues. 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. Department for Business Innovation and Skills (DIUS). Conflict theory in sociology. On the other hand, less optimistic perspectives tend to portray contemporary employment as being both more intensive and precarious (Sennett, 2006). '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. The traditional human and cultural capital that employers have always demanded now constitutes only part of graduates employability narratives. At another level, changes in the HE and labour market relationship map on to wider debates on the changing nature of employment more generally, and the effects this may have on the highly qualified. 6 0 obj Individuals therefore need to proactively manage these risks (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002). 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. Consensus theory, on the other hand, looks at how individuals interact and how this can lead to agreement. 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. 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". For graduates, the challenge is being able to package their employability in the form of a dynamic narrative that captures their wider achievements, and which conveys the appropriate personal and social credentials desired by employers. (2003) Higher Education and Social Class: Issues of Exclusion and Inclusion, London: Routledge. Introduction The theory of employability can be difficult to identify; there can be many factors that contribute to the idea of being employable. Personal characteristics, habits, and attitudes influence how you interact with others. 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). This is perhaps reflected in the increasing amount of new, modern and niche forms of graduate employment, including graduate sales mangers, marketing and PR officers, and IT executives. Book Present study overcomes this issue by introducing a framework that clearly In flexible labour markets, such as the United Kingdom this remains high. This may be largely due to the fact that employers have been reasonably responsive to generic academic profiles, providing that graduates fulfil various other technical and job-specific demands. 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. . The theory of employability can be difficult to identify; there can be many factors that contribute to the idea of being employable. 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. 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. 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. While they were aware of potential structural barriers relating to the potentially classed and gendered nature of labour markets, many of these young people saw the need to take proactive measures to negotiate theses challenges. 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). Moreau, M.P. Consensus Vs. Morley (2001) however states that employability . %PDF-1.7 express the aim not to focus on the 'superiority of a single theory in understanding employability' (p. 897), . 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. In such labour market contexts, HE regulates more clearly graduates access to particular occupations. Employability depends on your knowledge, skills and attitudes, how you use those assets, and how you present them to employers. 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. Individuals have to flexibly adapt to a job market that places increasing expectation and demands on them; in short, they need to continually maintain their employability. 2003). French sociologist and criminologist Emile . (2008) Graduate Employability: The View of Employers, London: Council for Industry and Higher Education. Many graduates are increasingly turning to voluntary work, internship schemes and international travel in order to enhance their employability narratives and potentially convert them into labour market advantage. 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). 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. They construct their individual employability in a relative and subjective manner. Structural Functionalism/ Consensus Theory. Similar to the Bowman et al. yLy;l_L&. 2003) and attempts to seek integrate them by formulating a model of explanatory form together with the existing empirical literature. Smetherham, C. (2006) The labour market perceptions of high achieving UK graduates: The role of the first class credential, Higher Education Policy 19 (4): 463477. The challenge, it seems, is for graduates to become adept at reading these signals and reframing both their expectations and behaviours. They found that a much higher proportion of female graduates work within public sector employment compared with males who attained more private sector and IT-based employment. 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. This is perhaps further reflected in the degree of qualification-based and skills mismatches, often referred to as vertical mismatches. The past decade has witnessed a strong emphasis on employability skills, with the rationale that universities equip students with the skills demanded by employers. Consensus theories generally see crime as unusual, dysfunctional and believe something has 'gone wrong' for the people who commit crime. This will largely shape how graduates perceive the linkage between their higher educational qualification and their future returns. (2008) Graduate development in European employment: Issues and contradictions, Education and Training 50 (5): 379390. (2003) and Reay et al. (2010) Education and the employability of graduates: Will Bologna make a difference? European Educational Research Journal 9 (1): 3244. Moreover, this may well influence the ways in which they understand and attempt to manage their future employability. 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. The theory of employability can be difficult to identify; there can be many factors that contribute to the idea of being employable. and Soskice, D.W. (2001) Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage, Oxford: Oxford University Press. This paper analyses the barriers to work faced by long- and short-term unemployed people in remote rural labour markets. Chevalier, A. and Lindley, J. 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. Employability skills are sometimes called foundational skills or job-readiness skills. The increasingly flexible and skills-rich nature of contemporary employment means that the highly educated are empowered in an economy demanding the creativity and abstract knowledge of those who have graduated from HE. Accordingly, there has been considerable government faith in the role of HE in meeting new economic imperatives. This will help further elucidate the ways in which graduates employability is played out within the specific context of their working lives, including the various modes of professional development and work-related learning that they are engaged in and the formation of their career profiles. This is also the case for working-class students who were prone to pathologise their inability to secure employment, even though their outcomes are likely reflect structural inequalities. 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. The purpose of this study is to explain the growth and popularity of consensus theory in present day sociology. This may well confirm emerging perceptions of their own career progression and what they need to do to enhance it. 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