International Higher Education, Winter 2004

Graduate Employment: Issues for Debate and Inquiry

Recent European studies have shown most graduates to be in quite reasonable employment situations a few years after graduating. While concerns continue to be expressed by some employers that many graduates do not possess the right skills and competencies, there is also considerable industry in many universities to improve the employability of their graduates. Does the evidence justify optimism?

Unquestioned Assumptions
Graduates are rewarded (or not) by the actions of employers. We must assume that these are the actions of rational and fully informed men and women. Thus, we must also assume that salaries reflect nothing but the balance between demand and supply. We must further assume that employers have perfect information on which to set wage levels, to make recruitment decisions, to train or to promote and they behave entirely rationally. Much of the analysis of graduate employment data explicitly or implicitly rests on assumptions of this sort. Occasionally sceptical voices are heard.

Averages Are Averages
The positive image currently associated with graduate employment prospects should not hide the possibility that the rosy futures of the majority may not be shared by all. A recent U.K. study, (Access to What? Analysis of Factors Determining Graduate Employability, by the Centre for Higher Education Research and Information), attempted to identify some of the social and educational factors associated with employment success. Overall, the differences in terms of social background were not as great as might have been expected from previous work. It remains the case, however, that the generally positive picture on graduate employment may be hiding some quite negative experiences for some graduates.

Perceptions are Perceptions
Most of our knowledge about skills and competencies comes from the perceptions of employers and the graduates themselves. While these are certainly interesting data, they should not go unchallenged. How many employers keep records about the relative success of graduates with different qualifications or backgrounds? And by definition, employers can have no knowledge at all about the employment success of the graduates they turned down (or who turned the employer down by not applying to them in the first place). Thus, employers’ perceptions are based on very imperfect information. Graduates, even more so, lack comparative experiences on which to base their perceptions.

Recruitment or Performance
Some of the efforts of higher education institutions to enhance employability seem to be principally about the first--advice on CV writing, practice interviews, etc. As employers develop ever more sophisticated recruitment techniques, higher education institutions give ever more support and advice to students on how to present themselves. At their most effective, these kinds of support are only about helping some students to succeed over others, helping to ensure that they get the “best jobs,” and that the institution’s employment record looks good. Neither the graduate nor his or her employer is necessarily made more productive by any of this. A recent study by Geoff Mason and Gareth Williams (How Much Does Higher Education Enhance the Employability of Graduates? 2003, Higher Education Funding Council for England) suggested that the impact of employability skills development may be strongest in the first few months of graduates’ careers. This is not to say that there are not some graduate characteristics--specific or generic--that have long-term value to employers.

Competence or Confidence
One of the things that struck us in the Access to What? project was the belief expressed by many teaching staff that confidence (and self-esteem, personal identity) might be more important than skills and competencies in determining both academic and employment success. Especially for the “non-traditional” student, doubts and lack of self-belief could be hampering achievement far more than any knowledge and skills deficit. And as far as employment was concerned, a lack of confidence could depress aspirations in the graduate and produce negative reactions in the recruiter.

A Division of Labor
Very few graduates (none?) will be fully “formed” professionally when they leave higher education. The recent European study of graduate employment suggested that countries differed in the roles played by higher education and employers in preparing graduates for work. U.K. employers seem to take a much greater share of the responsibility for education and training than is common elsewhere. This may well be a function of the brevity of first degrees in the United Kingdom and the role played by professional bodies in training and certification. This may also relate to differences in the role played by formal qualifications in regulating entry to and passage through the labor market.

The Transition
Building on the above, we still know comparatively little of how graduates achieve their generally positive employment situations after three or four years. We know that there are a lot of job changes, further study for many, and periods of unemployment for a significant minority. It might well be that the decisions taken and the experiences gained in the three years after graduation are as important for future employment success as the three years spent within higher education. Yet we know little about them.

The Streetwise Graduate
Many supposedly full-time students often combine their studies with substantial amounts of term-time work. This has implications for the student experience. Although the growth of term-time work has generally had a negative press, many students and staff see potentially positive aspects to the combination of experiences it can afford--such as time-management, teamwork, personal organization, financial management, and communication skills. Experiences that when taken singly may not add up to much, may when taken in combination, represent a period of life marked by huge demands and complexities and by personal achievements in coping with it all. But is anyone--in higher education or employment--fully recognizing these achievements? Roles and identities of student, worker, wife, and mother are held simultaneously rather than experienced serially. Is there a lot of learning going on here that we are failing to see and to celebrate?

Knowledge Economies
Notions of “knowledge economies” and “knowledge societies” give added rationale and justification for higher education expansion and reinforce the focus on employability questions. But what kinds of knowledge are really needed in the knowledge economy? We can distinguish between at least five sources of knowledge of which knowledge represented by educational qualifications is but one. Others are the nonassessed learning outcomes from formal education, training in the workplace, work experience, and everyday (life) experience. What “knowledge balance” is required by the demands of increasing flexibility, change over time, dissonance between personal and professional “identities,” both in the workplace and in “life”? And how does this balance change over the course of life?

One could go on. There is a large issue of how employment-related characteristics of the curriculum combine with or are opposed to other elements and purposes--something about which Harold Silver and I reached optimistic conclusions about 15 years ago (A Liberal Vocationalism, 1988, Methuen). Would we today?