Sennett, R. (2006) The Culture of New Capitalism, Yale: Yale University Press. (2008) Graduate development in European employment: Issues and contradictions, Education and Training 50 (5): 379390. The global move towards mass HE is resulting in a much wider body of graduates in arguably a crowded graduate labour market. One particular consequence of a massified, differentiated HE is therefore likely to be increased discrimination between different types of graduates. Roberts, K. (2009) Opportunity structures then and now, Journal of Education and Work 22 (5): 355368. 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). (2010) Overqualifcation, job satisfaction, and increasing dispersion in the returns to graduate education, Oxford Economic Papers 62 (4): 740763. Kelsall, R.K., Poole, A. and Kuhn, A. 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. It appears that the wider educational profile of the graduate is likely to have a significant bearing on their future labour market outcomes. Mason, G. (2002) High skills utilisation under mass higher education: Graduate employment in the service industries in Britain, Journal of Education and Work 14 (4): 427456. 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. The theory of employability can be hard to place ; there can be many factors that contribute to the thought of being employable. The purpose of this study is to explain the growth and popularity of consensus theory in present day sociology. 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). Continued training and lifelong learning is one way of staying fit in a job market context with shifting and ever-increasing employer demands. The past decade in the United Kingdom has therefore seen a strong focus on employability skills, including communication, teamworking, ICT and self-management being built into formal curricula. 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. This may have a strong bearing upon how both graduates and employers socially construct the problem of graduate 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. In effect, market rules dominate. 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. Ball, S.J. While in the main graduates command higher wages and are able to access wider labour market opportunities, the picture is a complex and variable one and reflects marked differences among graduates in their labour market returns and experiences. Nabi, G., Holden, R. and Walmsley, A. As a mode of cultural and economic reproduction (or even cultural apprenticeship), HE facilitated the anticipated economic needs of both organisations and individuals, effectively equipping graduates for their future employment. 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). Reducing the system/structure down to the graduate labour market, there are parallels between Archer's work and consensus theory (Brown et al. Morley ( 2001 ) nevertheless states that . Brennan, J. and Tang, W. (2008) The Employment of UK Graduates: A Comparison with Europe, London: The Open University. Naidoo, R. and Jamieson, I. This research highlighted that some had developed stronger identities and forms of identification with the labour market and specific future pathways. Google Scholar. For other students, careers were far more tangential to their personal goals and lifestyles, and were not something they were prepared to make strong levels of personal and emotional investment towards. 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. 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). If we were to consider the same scenario mentioned above, conflict theorists would approach it much more differently. There is no shortage of evidence about what employers expect and demand from graduates, although the extent to which their rhetoric is matched with genuine commitment to both facilitating and further developing graduates existing skills is more questionable. Elias, P. and Purcell, K. (2004) The Earnings of Graduates in Their Early Careers: Researching Graduates Seven Years on. 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. What their research illustrates is that these graduates labour market choices are very much wedded to their pre-existing dispositions and learner identities that frame what is perceived to be appropriate and available. 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. 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. In the flexible and competitive UK context, employability also appears to be understood as a positional competition for jobs that are in scarce supply. - 91.200.32.231. Despite the limitations, the model is adopted to evaluate the role of education stakeholders in the Nigerian HE. Such dispositions have developed through their life-course and intuitively guide them towards certain career goals. On the other hand, less optimistic perspectives tend to portray contemporary employment as being both more intensive and precarious (Sennett, 2006). 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. Maria Eliophotou Menon, Eleftheria Argyropoulou & Andreas Stylianou, Ly Thi Tran, Nga Thi Hang Ngo, Tien Thi Hanh Ho, David Walters, David Zarifa & Brittany Etmanski, Jason L. Brown, Sara J. 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). In flexible labour markets, such as the United Kingdom this remains high. Brown, P., Lauder, H. and Ashton, D.N. 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 . 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. 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. Over time, however, this traditional link between HE and the labour market has been ruptured. There is much continued debate over the way in which HE can contribute to graduates overall employment outcomes or, more sharply, their outputs and value-added in the labour market. Edvardsson Stiwne, E. and Alves, M.G. Beck, U. and Beck-Gernsheim, E. (2002) Individualization, London: Sage. Cranmer, S. (2006) Enhancing graduate employability: Best intentions and mixed outcome, Studies in Higher Education 31 (2): 169184. Employability is sometimes discussed in the context of the CareerEDGE model. Hammer, Peter McIlveen, Soo Jeung Lee, Seungjung Kim & Jisun Jung, Higher Education Policy In short, future research directions on graduate employability might need to be located more fully in the labour market. 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). (2003) The shape of research in the field of higher education and graduate employment: Some issues, Studies in Higher Education 28 (4): 413426. Becker, G. (1993) Human Capital: Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education (3rd edn), Chicago: Chicago University Press. x[[s~_1o:GC$rvFvuVJR+9E 4IV[uJUCF_nRj 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. Knight, P. and Yorke, M. (2004) Learning, Curriculum and Employability in Higher Education, London: Routledge Falmer. If initial identities are affirmed during the early stages of graduates working lives, they may well ossify and set the direction for future orientations and outlooks. (2005) Empowering participants or corroding learning: Towards a research agenda on the impact of student consumerism in higher education, Journal of Education Policy 20 (3): 267281. Rae, D. (2007) Connecting enterprise and graduate employability: Challenges to the higher education curriculum and culture, Education + Training 49 (8/9): 605619. Moreover, in terms of how governments and labour markets may attempt to coordinate and regulate the supply of graduates leaving systems of mass HE. This paper analyses the barriers to work faced by long- and short-term unemployed people in remote rural labour markets. 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. %PDF-1.7 A consensus theory is one which believes that the institutions of society are working together to maintain social cohesion and stability. The consensus theory emphasizes that the social order is through the shared norms, and belief systems of people. 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. As Brown et al. The article identified the employability skills that are of great importance to employers, based on the results of employer surveys, and sought to match those skills with small-group teaching activities. A further policy response towards graduate employability has been around the enhancement of graduates skills, following the influential Dearing Report (1997). 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). Clarke, M. (2008) Understanding and managing employability in changing career contexts, Journal of European Industrial Training 32 (4): 258284. The paper considers the wider context of higher education (HE) and labour market change, and the policy thinking towards graduate employability. Teichler, U. 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. 1.2 THE CLASSICAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT The purpose of G.T. 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. What such research has shown is that the wider cultural features of graduates frame their self-perceptions, and which can then be reinforced through their interactions within the wider employment context. develop the ideas in his General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936). Tomlinson, M. (2007) Graduate employability and student attitudes and orientations to the labour market, Journal of Education and Work 20 (4): 285304. 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 . (2007) Round and round the houses: The Leitch review of skills, Local Economy 22 (2): 111117. 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. Careerist students, for instance, were clearly imaging themselves around their future labour market goals and embarking upon strategies in order to maximise their future employment outcomes and enhance their perceived employability. Personal characteristics, habits, and attitudes influence how you interact with others. (2008) Managing in the New Economy: Restructuring White-Collar Work in the USA, UK and Japan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. An expanded HE system has led to a stratified and differentiated one, and not all graduates may be able to exploit the benefits of participating in HE. 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. Research Paper 1, University of West England & Warwick University, Warwick Institute for Employment Research. They also reported quite high levels of satisfaction among graduates on their perceived utility of their formal and informal university experiences. 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. The new UK coalition government, working within a framework of budgetary constraints, have been less committed to expansion and have begun capping student numbers (HEFCE, 2010). research investigating employability from the employers' perspective has been qualitative in nature. Wolf, A. Various stakeholders involved in HE be they policymakers, employers and paying students all appear to be demanding clear and tangible outcomes in response to increasing economic stakes. If individuals are able to capitalise upon their education and training, and adopt relatively flexible and proactive approaches to their working lives, then they will experience favourable labour market returns and conditions. 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. 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. (2007) The transition from higher education into work: Tales of cohesion and fragmentation, Education + Training 49 (7): 516585. Department for Education (DFE). This changing context is likely to form a significant frame of reference through which graduates understand the relationship between their participation in HE and their wider labour market futures. Department for Education Skills (DFES). The theory of employability can be difficult to identify; there can be many factors that contribute to the idea of being employable. 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. Increasingly, individual graduates are no longer constrained by the old corporate structures that may have traditionally limited their occupational agility. 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. Teichler, U. These theorists believe that the society and its equilibrium are based on the consensus or agreement of people. 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. In addition, the human development theory and the human capital theory come to the forefront whenever employability is considered. Bourdieu, P. (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The research by Archer et al. 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