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. Despite the limitations, the model is adopted to evaluate the role of education stakeholders in the Nigerian HE. The theory of employability can be difficult to identify; there can be many factors that contribute to the idea of being employable. Critical approaches to labour market change have also tended to point to the structural inequalities within the labour market, reflected and reinforced through the ways in which different social groups approach both the educational and labour market fields. Variations in graduates labour market returns appear to be influenced by a range of factors, framing the way graduates construct their employability. 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. Puhakka, A., Rautopuro, J. and Tuominen, V. (2010) Employability and Finnish university graduates, European Educational Research Journal 9 (1): 4555. 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. 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. Holden, R. and Hamblett, J. 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. 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). Smart et al. 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. Purpose. (2003) and Reay et al. Avoid the most common mistakes and prepare your manuscript for journal 9n=#Ql\(~_e!Ul=>MyHv'Ez'uH7w2'ffP"M*5Lh?}s$k9Zw}*7-ni{?7d Graduates are therefore increasingly likely to see responsibility for future employability as falling quite sharply onto the shoulders of the individual graduate: being a graduate and possessing graduate-level credentials no longer warrants access to sought-after employment, if only because so many other graduates share similar educational and pre-work profiles. The problem of graduates employability remains a continuing policy priority for higher education (HE) policymakers in many advanced western economies. 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). The social cognitive career theory (SCTT), based on Bandura's (2002) General social cognitive theory, suggests that self-perceived employability affects an individual's career interest and behavior, and that self-perceived employability is a determinant of an individual's ability to find a job (lvarez-Gonzlez et al., 2017). Brown, P. and Hesketh, A.J. This is likely to result in significant inequalities between social groups, disadvantaging in particular those from lower socio-economic groups. Department for Education Skills (DFES). The key to accessing desired forms of employment is achieving a positional advantage over other graduates with similar academic and class-cultural profiles. This tends to be reflected in the perception among graduates that, while graduating from HE facilitates access to desired employment, it also increasingly has a limited role (Tomlinson, 2007; Brooks and Everett, 2009; Little and Archer, 2010). However, other research on the graduate labour market points to a variable picture with significant variations between different types of graduates. Brown, Hesketh and Williams (2002) concur that the . Personal characteristics, habits, and attitudes influence how you interact with others. A consensus theory approach sees sport as a source of collective harmony, a way of binding people together in a shared experience. Wider critiques of skills policy (Wolf, 2007) have tended to challenge naive conceptualisations of skills, bringing into question both their actual relationship to employee practices and the extent to which they are likely to be genuinely demand-led. 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). 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. They also reported quite high levels of satisfaction among graduates on their perceived utility of their formal and informal university experiences. Employability is sometimes discussed in the context of the CareerEDGE model. 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. Smart, S., Hutchings, M., Maylor, U., Mendick, H. and Menter, I. Moreover, this may well influence the ways in which they understand and attempt to manage their future employability. editors. European-wide secondary data also confirms such patterns, as reflected in variable cross-national graduate returns (Eurostat, 2009). 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. (2010) Overqualifcation, job satisfaction, and increasing dispersion in the returns to graduate education, Oxford Economic Papers 62 (4): 740763. These changes have had a number of effects. This will largely shape how graduates perceive the linkage between their higher educational qualification and their future returns. - 91.200.32.231. 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. Under consensus theory the absence of conflict is seen as the equilibrium . 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). Thus, HE has been traditionally viewed as providing a positive platform from which graduates could integrate successfully into economic life, as well as servicing the economy effectively. 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. 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. In such labour market contexts, HE regulates more clearly graduates access to particular occupations. <>stream 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). 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. Ideally, graduates would be able to possess both the hard currencies in the form of traditional academic qualifications together with soft currencies in the form of cultural and interpersonal qualities. 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. At the same time, the seeming consensus regarding employability as an outcome with reference to employment or employment rates belies the complexity that surrounds the concept in the wider literature. 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. In effect, individuals can no longer rely on their existing educational and labour market profiles for shaping their longer-term career progression. 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. 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 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). Ball, S.J. They also include the professional skills that enable you to be successful in the workplace. Bridgstock, R. (2009) The graduate attributes weve overlooked: Enhancing graduate employability through career management skills, Higher Education Research and Development 28 (1): 3144. 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. 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. 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. Prior to this, Harvey ( 2001 ) has defined employability in assorted ways from single and institutional positions. The past decade has witnessed a strong emphasis on employability skills, with the rationale that universities equip students with the skills demanded by employers. Their findings relate to earlier work on Careership (Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1997), itself influenced by Bourdieu's (1977) theories of capital and habitus. Compelling evidence on employers approaches to managing graduate talent (Brown and Hesketh, 2004) exposes this situation quite starkly. Value consensus assumes that the norms and values of society are generally agreed and that social life is based on co-operation rather than conflict. The underlying assumption of this view is that the Marginson, S. (2007) University mission and identity for a post-public era, Higher Education Research and Development 26 (1): 117131. Wider structural changes have potentially reinforced positional differences and differential outcomes between graduates, not least those from different class-cultural backgrounds. 2023 Springer Nature Switzerland AG. Argues that even employable people may fail to find jobs because of positional competition in the knowledge-driven economy. 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". At one level, there has been an optimistic vision of the economy as being fluid and knowledge-intensive (Leadbetter, 2000), readily absorbing the skills and intellectual capital that graduates possess. Archer, W. and Davison, J. Research in the field also points to increasing awareness among graduates around the challenges of future employability. Consensus theories include functionalism, strain theory and subcultural theory. (2009) reported significant awareness among graduates of class inequalities for accessing specific jobs, along with expectations of potential disadvantages through employers biases around issues such as appearance, accent and cultural code. 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). This paper reviews some of the key empirical and conceptual themes in the area of graduate employability over the past decade in order to make sense of graduate employability as a policy issue. Warhurst, C. (2008) The knowledge economy, skills and government labour market intervention, Policy Studies 29 (1): 7186. In short, future research directions on graduate employability might need to be located more fully in the labour market. Ainley, P. (1994) Degrees of Difference, London: Lawrence Washart. 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. volume25,pages 407431 (2012)Cite this article. 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. The theory of post war consensus has been used by political historians and political scientists to explain and understand British political developments in the era between 1945 and 1979. . It will further show that while common trends are evident across national context, the HElabour market relationship is also subject to national variability. Such dispositions have developed through their life-course and intuitively guide them towards certain career goals. Moreover, this is likely to shape their orientations towards the labour market, potentially affecting their overall trajectories and outcomes. (2010) Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education (The Browne Review), London: HMSO. Graduate employability and skills development are also significant determinants for future career success. An example of this is the family. (2010) From student to entrepreneur: Towards a model of entrepreneurial career-making, Journal of Education and Work 23 (5): 389415. Such changes have coincided with what has typically been seen as a shift towards a more flexible, post-industrialised knowledge-driven economy that places increasing demands on the workforce and necessitates new forms of work-related skills (Hassard et al., 2008). 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. Young, M. (2009) Education, globalisation and the voice of knowledge, Journal of Education and Work 22 (3): 193204. What this has shown is that graduates see the link between participation in HE and future returns to have been disrupted through mass HE. Such notions of economic change tend to be allied to human capital conceptualisations of education and economic growth (Becker, 1993). Advancement in technological innovation requires the application of technical skills and knowledge; thus, attracting and retaining talented knowledge workers have become crucial for incumbent firms . 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. Similar to the Bowman et al. Morley (2001) however states that employability . 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. Chapter 2 is to refute the Classical theory of employment and unemployment on both empirical and logical grounds. Kelsall, R.K., Poole, A. and Kuhn, A. Such strategies typically involve the accruement of additional forms of credentials and capitals that can be converted into economic gain. 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. Part of Springer Nature. Roberts, K. (2009) Opportunity structures then and now, Journal of Education and Work 22 (5): 355368. Less positively, their research exposed gender disparities gap in both pay and the types of occupations graduates work within. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate the slides or the slide controller buttons at the end to navigate through each slide. Consensus v. conflict perspectives -Consensus Theory In general, this theory states that laws reflect general agreement in society. Policymakers continue to emphasise the importance of employability skills in order for graduates to be fully equipped in meeting the challenges of an increasingly flexible labour market (DIUS, 2008). The research by Archer et al. While investment in HE may result in favourable outcomes for some graduates, this is clearly not the case across the board. 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). Consensus theory, on the other hand, looks at how individuals interact and how this can lead to agreement. Both policymakers and employers have looked to exert a stronger influence on the HE agenda, particularly around its formal provisions, in order to ensure that graduates leaving HE are fit-for-purpose (Teichler, 1999, 2007; Harvey, 2000). Again, graduates respond to the challenges of increasing flexibility, individualisation and positional competition in different ways. (2008) Graduate Employability: The View of Employers, London: Council for Industry and Higher Education. Continued training and lifelong learning is one way of staying fit in a job market context with shifting and ever-increasing employer demands. 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. The consensus theory of employment argues that technological innovation is the driving force of social change (Drucker, 1993, Kerr, 1973). French sociologist and criminologist Emile . known as "Graduate Employability" (Harvey 2003; Yorke 2006). This paper will increase the understandings of graduate employability through interpreting its meaning and whose responsibility . . 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. 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. Department for Business Innovation and Skills (DIUS). Employability. the consensus and the conflict theory on graduate employability . Beck, U. and Beck-Gernsheim, E. (2002) Individualization, London: Sage. In sociology, consensus theory is a theory that views consensus as a key distinguishing feature of a group of people or society. 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. Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). 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. Wilton, N. (2008) Business graduates and management jobs: An employability match made in heaven? Journal of Education and Work 21 (2): 143158. 213240. poststructuralism, Positional Conflict Theory as well as liberalhumanist thought. 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. Department for Education (DFE). This makes it reasonable to ask whether there is any such thing as the consensus theory of truth at all, in other words, whether there is any one single principle that the various approaches have in common, or whether the phrase is being used as a catch-all for a motley . (2003) The Future of Higher Education, London: HMSO. The study explores differences in the implicit employability theories of those involved in developing employability (educators) and those selecting and recruiting higher education (HE) students and graduates (employers). Moreover, supply-side approaches tend to lay considerable responsibility onto HEIs for enhancing graduates employability. Moreover, they will be more productive, have higher earning potential and be able to access a range of labour market goods including better working conditions, higher status and more fulfilling work. '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. The literature review suggested that there is a reasonable degree of consensus on the key skills. While at one level the correspondence between HE and the labour market has become blurred by these various structural changes, there has also been something of a tightening of the relationship. Boden, R. and Nedeva, M. (2010) Employing discourse: Universities and graduate employability, Journal of Education Policy 25 (1): 3754. Consequently, they will have to embark upon increasingly uncertain employment futures, continually having to respond to the changing demands of internal and external labour markets. Research by Tomlinson (2007) has shown that some students on the point of transiting to employment are significantly more orientated towards the labour market than others. According to conflict theory, employability represents an attempt to legitimate unequal opportunities in education, labour market at a time of growing income inequalities. yLy;l_L&. These negotiations continue well into graduates working lives, as they continue to strive towards establishing credible work identities. 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 New Right argues that liberal left politicians and welfare policies have undermined the . As HE's role for regulating future professional talent becomes reshaped, questions prevail over whose responsibility it is for managing graduates transitions and employment outcomes: universities, states, employers or individual graduates themselves? Chapter 1 1. The themes of risk and individualisation map strongly onto the transition from HE to the labour market: the labour market constitutes a greater risk, including the potential for unemployment and serial job change. [PDF] Graduate Employability Skills: Differences between the Private and 02 May 2015 Education is vital in the knowledge economy as the commodity of . Harvey, L. (2000) New realities: The relationship between higher education and employment, Tertiary Education and Management 6 (1): 317. 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.. Career choices tend to be made within specific action frames, or what they refer to as horizons for actions. Bowman et al. This insight, combined with a growing consensus that government should try to stabilize employment, has led to much By reductio ad absurdum, Keynes demonstrates that the predictions of Classical theory do not accord with the observed response of workers to changes in real wages. Consensus Vs. 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. (2003) The shape of research in the field of higher education and graduate employment: Some issues, Studies in Higher Education 28 (4): 413426. In section 6, an holistic framework for under- This is further reflected in pay difference and breadth of career opportunities open to different genders. Overall, it was shown that UK graduates tend to take more flexible and less predictable routes to their destined employment, with far less in the way of horizontal substitution between their degree studies and target employment. 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. Furlong, A. and Cartmel, F. (2005) Graduates from Disadvantaged Backgrounds: Early Labour Market Experiences, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. This may have a strong bearing upon how both graduates and employers socially construct the problem of graduate employability. The concerns that have been well documented within the non-graduate youth labour market (Roberts, 2009) are also clearly resonating with the highly qualified. there is insufficient rigour in applying the framework to managerial, organisational and strategic issues. Reay, D., Ball, S.J. (2003) Higher Education and Social Class: Issues of Exclusion and Inclusion, London: Routledge. 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. 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. Nabi, G., Holden, R. and Walmsley, A. The prominence is on developing critical and reflective skills, with a view to empowering and enhancing the learner. Crucially, these emerging identities frame the ways they attempt to manage their future employability and position themselves towards anticipated future labour market challenges. (2007) Round and round the houses: The Leitch review of skills, Local Economy 22 (2): 111117. Establishing credible Work identities respond to the challenges of future employability among graduates on their existing and. Harmony, a feature of a group of people or society known as & quot ; ( Harvey 2003 Yorke... As liberalhumanist thought further show that while common trends are evident across national,! 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