consensus theory of employabilityconsensus theory of employability

Such changes have inevitably led to questions over HE's role in meeting the needs of both the wider labour market and graduates, concerns that have largely emanated from the corporate world (Morley and Aynsley, 2007; Boden and Nedeva, 2010). 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. Name one consensus theory and one conflict theory. Skills formally taught and acquired during university do not necessarily translate into skills utilised in graduate employment. What this has shown is that graduates see the link between participation in HE and future returns to have been disrupted through mass HE. 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. Holden, R. and Hamblett, J. (2003) Class Strategies and the Education Market: The Middle Classes and Social Advantage, London: Routledge. Google Scholar. (2003) Higher Education and Social Class: Issues of Exclusion and Inclusion, London: Routledge. The challenge for graduate employees is to develop strategies that militate against such likelihoods. For instance, non-traditional students who had studied at local institutions may be far more likely to fix their career goals around local labour markets, some of which may afford limited opportunities for career progression. 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. Brown, P. and Hesketh, A.J. The challenge, it seems, is for graduates to become adept at reading these signals and reframing both their expectations and behaviours. volume25,pages 407431 (2012)Cite this article. Smart, S., Hutchings, M., Maylor, U., Mendick, H. and Menter, I. Elias and Purcell's (2004) research has reported positive overall labour market outcomes in graduates early career trajectories 7 years on from graduation: in the main graduates manage to secure paid employment and enjoy comparatively higher earning than non-graduates. These risks include wrong payments to staff due to delay in flow of information in relation to staff retirement, death, transfers . Roberts, K. (2009) Opportunity structures then and now, Journal of Education and Work 22 (5): 355368. Greenbank, P. (2007) Higher education and the graduate labour market: The Class Factor, Tertiary Education and Management 13 (4): 365376. 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. Savage, M. (2003) A new class paradigm? British Journal of Sociology of Education 24 (4): 535541. These changes have had a number of effects. The research by Archer et al. 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. It appears that the wider educational profile of the graduate is likely to have a significant bearing on their future labour market outcomes. Consensus Theory: the Basics According to consensus theories, for the most part society works because most people are successfully socialised into shared values through the family Sennett, R. (2006) The Culture of New Capitalism, Yale: Yale University Press. Kirton, G. (2009) Career plans and aspirations of recent black and minority ethnic business graduates, Work, Employment and Society 23 (1): 1229. . Much of the graduate employability focus has been on supply-side responses towards enhancing graduates' skills for the labour market. Hinchliffe, G. and Jolly, A. Purists, believing that their employability is largely constitutive of their meritocratic achievements, still largely equate their employability with traditional hard currencies, and are therefore not so adept at responding to signals from employers. the consensus and the conflict theory on graduate employability . Harvey, L., Moon, S. and Geall, V. (1997) Graduates Work: Organisational Change and Students Attributes, Birmingham: QHE. While some of these graduates appear to be using their extra studies as a platform for extending their potential career scope, for others it is additional time away from the job market and can potentially confirm that sense of ambivalence towards it. Teichler, U. These attributes, sometimes referred to as "employability skills," are thought to be . This has tended to challenge some of the traditional ways of understanding graduates and their position in the labour market, not least classical theories of cultural reproduction. Perhaps increasingly central to the changing dynamic between HE and the labour market has been the issue of graduate employability. . 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). This is perhaps further reflected in the degree of qualification-based and skills mismatches, often referred to as vertical mismatches. In section 6, an holistic framework for under- (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. 9n=#Ql\(~_e!Ul=>MyHv'Ez'uH7w2'ffP"M*5Lh?}s$k9Zw}*7-ni{?7d A further policy response towards graduate employability has been around the enhancement of graduates skills, following the influential Dearing Report (1997). (2007) Round and round the houses: The Leitch review of skills, Local Economy 22 (2): 111117. 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. 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. 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. Young, M. (2009) Education, globalisation and the voice of knowledge, Journal of Education and Work 22 (3): 193204. Again, there appears to be little uniformity in the way these graduates attempt to manage their employability, as this is often tied to a range of ongoing life circumstances and goals some of which might be more geared to the job market than others. Thus, graduates who are confined to non-graduate occupations, or even new forms of employment that do not necessitate degree-level study, may find themselves struggling to achieve equitable returns. Compelling evidence on employers approaches to managing graduate talent (Brown and Hesketh, 2004) exposes this situation quite starkly. Theory could be viewed as a coherent group of assumptions or propositions put forth to . Boden, R. and Nedeva, M. (2010) Employing discourse: Universities and graduate employability, Journal of Education Policy 25 (1): 3754. The final aim is to logically distinguish . . Cardiff School of Social Sciences Working Paper 118. 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 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). In some parts of Europe, graduates frame their employability more around the extent to which they can fulfil the specific occupational criteria based on specialist training and knowledge. Little, B. Morley ( 2001 ) nevertheless states that . Employability. Elias, P. and Purcell, K. (2004) The Earnings of Graduates in Their Early Careers: Researching Graduates Seven Years on. The problem of managing one's future employability is therefore seen largely as being up to the individual graduate. The global move towards mass HE is resulting in a much wider body of graduates in arguably a crowded graduate labour market. Chapter 2 is to refute the Classical theory of employment and unemployment on both empirical and logical grounds. Discussing graduates patterns of work-related learning, Brooks and Everett (2008) argue that for many graduates this learning was work-related and driven by the need to secure a particular job and progress within one's current position (Brooks and Everett, 2008, 71). This is further reflected in pay difference and breadth of career opportunities open to different genders. The end of work and its commentators, The Sociological Review 55 (1): 81103. '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. This research showed the increasing importance graduates attributed to extra-curricula activities in light of concerns around the declining value of formal degrees qualifications. 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. Ball, S.J. (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. Employers and Universities: Conceptual Dimensions, Research Evidence and Implications, Reconceptualising employability of returnees: what really matters and strategic navigating approaches, Relations between graduates learning experiences and employment outcomes: a cautionary note for institutional performance indicators, The Effects of a Masters Degree on Wage and Job Satisfaction in Massified Higher Education: The Case of South Korea. The purpose of this article is to show that the way employability is typically defined in official statements is seriously flawed because it ignores what will be called the 'duality of employability'. Increasingly, individual graduates are no longer constrained by the old corporate structures that may have traditionally limited their occupational agility. The relationship between HE and the labour market has traditionally been a closely corresponding one, although in sometimes loose and intangible ways (Brennan et al., 1996; Johnston, 2003). Research Paper 1, University of West England & Warwick University, Warwick Institute for Employment Research. The literature review suggested that there is a reasonable degree of consensus on the key skills. As such, these identities and dispositions are likely to shape graduates action frames, including their decisions to embark upon various career routes. Naidoo, R. and Jamieson, I. Ainley, P. (1994) Degrees of Difference, London: Lawrence Washart. Taken-for-granted assumptions about a job for life, if ever they existed, appear to have given away to genuine concerns over the anticipated need to be employable. Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. 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. Harvey, L. (2000) New realities: The relationship between higher education and employment, Tertiary Education and Management 6 (1): 317. 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. Conflict theory in sociology. The research by Brennan and Tang shows that graduates in continental Europe were more likely to perceive a closer matching between their HE and work experience; in effect, their HE had had a more direct bearing on their future employment and had set them up more specifically for particular jobs. Such dispositions have developed through their life-course and intuitively guide them towards certain career goals. Their location within their respective fields of employment, and the level of support they receive from employers towards developing this, may inevitably have a considerable bearing upon their wider labour market experiences. Chapter 1 1. While investment in HE may result in favourable outcomes for some graduates, this is clearly not the case across the board. Between HE and the labour market structures that may have traditionally limited their occupational.. To shape graduates action frames, including their decisions to embark upon various career routes West England Warwick! 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