. Brooks, R. and Everett, G. (2009) Post-graduate reflections on the value of a degree, British Educational Research Journal 35 (3): 333349. More positive accounts of graduates labour market outcomes tend to support the notion of HE as a positive investment that leads to favourable returns. This insight, combined with a growing consensus that government should try to stabilize employment, has led to much (employment, marriage, children) that strengthen social bonds -Population Heterogeneity Stability in criminal offending is due to an anti-social characteristic (e., low self-control) that reverberates . 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. The simultaneous decoupling and tightening in the HElabour market relationship therefore appears to have affected the regulation of graduates into specific labour market positions and their transitions more generally. Leadbetter, C. (2000) Living on Thin Air, London: Penguin. Graduates clearly follow different employment pathways and embark upon a multifarious range of career routes, all leading to different experiences and outcomes. In some countries, for instance Germany, HE is a clearer investment as evinced in marked wage and opportunity differences between graduate and non-graduate forms of employment. . The review has also highlighted the contested terrain around which debates on graduates employability and its development take place. In addition, the human development theory and the human capital theory come to the forefront whenever employability is considered. - 91.200.32.231. of employability has been subjected to little conceptual examination. 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. Roberts, K. (2009) Opportunity structures then and now, Journal of Education and Work 22 (5): 355368. Tomlinson's research also highlighted the propensity towards discourses of self-responsibilisation by students making the transitions to work. Debates on the future of work tend towards either the utopian or dystopian (Leadbetter, 2000; Sennett, 2006; Fevre, 2007). 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. 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. ISSN 2039-9340 (print) ISSN 2039-2117 (online) Return to Article Details Graduate Employability Skills: Differences between the Private and the Public Sector in South Africa Download Download PDF Graduate Employability Skills: Differences between the Private and the Public Sector in South Africa Download Download PDF The Varieties of Capitalism approach developed by Hall and Soskice (2001) may be useful here in explaining the different ways in which different national economies coordinate the relationship between their education systems and human resource strategies. Individual employability is defined as alumnus being able . This agenda is likely to gain continued momentum with the increasing costs of studying in HE and the desire among graduates to acquire more vocationally relevant skills to better equip them for the job market. (2000) Recruiting a graduate elite? (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. Much of the graduate employability focus has been on supply-side responses towards enhancing graduates' skills for the labour market. Employable individuals are able to demonstrate a fundamental level of functioning or skill to perform a given job, or an employable individual's skills and experience . Variations in graduates labour market returns appear to be influenced by a range of factors, framing the way graduates construct their employability. They construct their individual employability in a relative and subjective manner. Morley (2001) however states that employability . Various analysis of graduate returns (Brown and Hesketh, 2004; Green and Zhu, 2010) have highlighted the significant disparities that exist among graduates; in particular, some marked differences between the highest graduate earners and the rest. Consensus v. conflict perspectives -Consensus Theory In general, this theory states that laws reflect general agreement in society. The problem of managing one's future employability is therefore seen largely as being up to the individual graduate. Accordingly, there has been considerable government faith in the role of HE in meeting new economic imperatives. Learning and employability are clearly supportive constructs but this relationship appears to be under represented and lacks clarity. HE has traditionally helped regulate the flow of skilled, professional and managerial workers. 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. One is the pre-existing level of social and cultural capital that these graduates possess, which opens up greater opportunities. Barrie, S. (2006) Understanding what we mean by generic attributes of graduates, Higher Education 51 (2): 215241. In short, future research directions on graduate employability might need to be located more fully in the labour market. Most significantly, they may be better able to demonstrate the appropriate personality package increasingly valued in the more elite organisations (Brown and Hesketh, 2004; Brown and Lauder, 2009). Department for Education Skills (DFES). (2010) Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education (The Browne Review), London: HMSO. (1999) Higher education policy and the world of work: Changing conditions and challenges, Higher Education Policy 12 (4): 285312. Hammer, Peter McIlveen, Soo Jeung Lee, Seungjung Kim & Jisun Jung, Higher Education Policy Consensus theories have a philosophical tradition dating . The theory of employability can be difficult to identify; there can be many factors that contribute to the idea of being employable. Taylor, J. and Pick, D. (2008) The work orientations of Australian university students, Journal of Education and Work 21 (5): 405421. According to conflict theory, employability represents an attempt to legitimate unequal opportunities in education, labour market at a time of growing income inequalities. Reviews for a period of 20 years between 1994 and 2013 have been assimilated and categorized into two propositions. (1996) Higher Education and Work, London: Jessica Kingsley. Wilton, N. (2008) Business graduates and management jobs: An employability match made in heaven? Journal of Education and Work 21 (2): 143158. Brown, P. and Hesketh, A.J. They also reported quite high levels of satisfaction among graduates on their perceived utility of their formal and informal university experiences. 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. (2006) showed that students choices towards studying at particular HEIs are likely to reflect subsequent choices. The issue of graduate employability tends to rest within the increasing economisation of HE. Universities have experienced heightened pressures to respond to an increasing range of internal and external market demands, reframing the perceived value of their activities and practices. These negotiations continue well into graduates working lives, as they continue to strive towards establishing credible work identities. The consensus theory emphasizes that the social order is through the shared norms, and belief systems of people. Even those students with strong intrinsic orientations around extra-curricula activities are aware of the need to translate these into marketable, value-added skills. 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. Research has continually highlighted engrained employer biases towards particular graduates, ordinarily those in possession of traditional cultural and academic currencies and from more prestigious HEIs (Harvey et al., 1997; Hesketh, 2000). Rae, D. (2007) Connecting enterprise and graduate employability: Challenges to the higher education curriculum and culture, Education + Training 49 (8/9): 605619. A consensus theory is one which believes that the institutions of society are working together to maintain social cohesion and stability. (2011) The Global Auction: The Broken Promises of Education, Jobs and Incomes, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (2003) and Reay et al. Moreau and Leathwood reported strong tendencies for graduates to attribute their labour market outcomes and success towards personal attributes and qualities as much as the structure of available opportunities. This is further reflected in pay difference and breadth of career opportunities open to different genders. % The consensus theory is based o n the propositions that technological innovation is the driving force of so cial change. (eds.) there is insufficient rigour in applying the framework to managerial, organisational and strategic issues. For Beck and Beck-Germsheim (2002), processes of institutionalised individualisation mean that the labour market effectively becomes a motor for individualisation, in that responsibility for economic outcomes is transferred away from work organisations and onto individuals. 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). These theorists believe that the society and its equilibrium are based on the consensus or agreement of people. Collins, R. (2000) Comparative and Historical Patterns of Education, in M. Hallinan (ed.) Employability is sometimes discussed in the context of the CareerEDGE model. This paper draws largely from UK-based research and analysis, but also relates this to existing research and data at an international level. A further policy response towards graduate employability has been around the enhancement of graduates skills, following the influential Dearing Report (1997). Traditionally, linkages between the knowledge and skills produced through universities and those necessitated by employers have tended to be quite flexible and open-ended. The traditional human and cultural capital that employers have always demanded now constitutes only part of graduates employability narratives. This may further entail experiencing adverse labour market experiences such as unemployment and underemployment. Driven largely by sets of identities and dispositions, graduates relationship with the labour market is both a personal and active one. Marginson, S. (2007) University mission and identity for a post-public era, Higher Education Research and Development 26 (1): 117131. 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. explains that employability influences three theories: Talcott Parson's Consensus Theory that is linked to norms and shared beliefs of the society; Conflict theory of Karl Marx, who elaborated how the finite resources of the world drive towards eternal conflict; and Human Capital Theory of Becker which is The research by Archer et al. Mass HE may therefore be perpetuating the types of structural inequalities it was intended to alleviate. It appears that students and graduates reflect upon their relationship with the labour market and what they might need to achieve their goals. The most discernable changes in HE have been its gradual massification over the past three decades and, in more recent times, the move towards greater individual expenditure towards HE in the form of student fees. Becker, G. (1993) Human Capital: Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education (3rd edn), Chicago: Chicago University Press. Power, S. and Whitty, G. (2006) Graduating and Graduations Within the Middle Class: The Legacy of an Elite Higher Education, Cardiff: Cardiff University, School of Social Sciences. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Cardiff School of Social Sciences Working Paper 118. Consensus Theory. (2007) Does higher education matter? 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. Expands the latter into positional conflict theory, which explains how the market for credentials is rigged and how individuals are ranked in it. 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. . 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. Chevalier, A. and Lindley, J. Players are adept at responding to such competition, embarking upon strategies that will enable them to acquire and present the types of employability narratives that employers demand. Keynes's theory suggested that increases in government spending, tax cuts, and monetary expansion could be used to counteract depressions. Fevre, R. (2007) Employment insecurity and social theory: The power of nightmares, Work, Employment and Society 21 (3): 517535. 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). Hinchliffe, G. and Jolly, A. Graduate employability is clearly a problem that goes far wider than formal participation in HE, and is heavily bound up in the coordination, regulation and management of graduate employment through the course of graduate working lives. Over time, however, this traditional link between HE and the labour market has been ruptured. 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. 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. 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. (2006) The evolution of the boundaryless career concept: Examining the physical and psychological mobility, Journal of Vocational Behavior 69 (1): 1929. 2.1 Theoretical Debate on Employability This section examines the contemporary consensus and conflict theory of employability of graduates (Brown et al. Examines employability through the lenses of consensus theory and conflict theory. Teichler, U. 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. 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). (2010) Overqualifcation, job satisfaction, and increasing dispersion in the returns to graduate education, Oxford Economic Papers 62 (4): 740763. This clearly implies that graduates expect their employability management to be an ongoing project throughout different stages of their careers. 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. Such notions of economic change tend to be allied to human capital conceptualisations of education and economic growth (Becker, 1993). The theory of employability can be hard to place ; there can be many factors that contribute to the thought of being employable. In more flexible labour markets such as the United Kingdom, this relationship is far from a straightforward one. Boden, R. and Nedeva, M. (2010) Employing discourse: Universities and graduate employability, Journal of Education Policy 25 (1): 3754. 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 . As Clarke (2008) illustrates, the employability discourse reflects the increasing onus on individual employees to continually build up their repositories of knowledge and skills in an era when their career progression is less anchored around single organisations and specific job types. Such strategies typically involve the accruement of additional forms of credentials and capitals that can be converted into economic gain. Personal characteristics, habits, and attitudes influence how you interact with others. volume25,pages 407431 (2012)Cite this article. Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative, Over 10 million scientific documents at your fingertips, Not logged in The literature review suggested that there is a reasonable degree of consensus on the key skills. Reducing the system/structure down to the graduate labour market, there are parallels between Archer's work and consensus theory (Brown et al. 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. Purpose. Historically, the majority of employability research and practice pertained to vocational rehabilitation or to the attractiveness and selection of job candidates. The extent to which future work forms a significant part of their future life goals is likely to determine how they approach the labour market, as well as their own future employability. 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. Morley ( 2001 ) nevertheless states that . yLy;l_L&. Crucially, these emerging identities frame the ways they attempt to manage their future employability and position themselves towards anticipated future labour market challenges. The theory of employability refers to the concept that an individual's ability to secure and maintain employment is not solely dependent on their technical skills and job-specific knowledge, but also on a set of broader personal attributes and characteristics. . Individuals therefore need to proactively manage these risks (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002). Book French sociologist and criminologist Emile . 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. Career choices tend to be made within specific action frames, or what they refer to as horizons for actions. 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. Kelsall, R.K., Poole, A. and Kuhn, A. 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Choices towards studying at particular HEIs are likely to reflect subsequent choices the of... A policy climate of heavy central planning and target-setting around the enhancement of graduates, Education... But consensus theory of employability relationship appears to be under represented and lacks clarity 's research highlighted. That can be hard to place ; there can be hard to ;! Driven largely by sets of identities and dispositions, graduates relationship with the market! 21 ( 2 ): 143158 cial change 2.1 Theoretical Debate on employability section... You interact with others match made in heaven part of graduates ( Brown al! Of career routes, all leading to different experiences and outcomes these theorists believe that the society its! Showed that students choices towards studying at particular HEIs are likely to subsequent! Research directions on graduate employability might need to translate these into marketable, value-added skills we mean generic... 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