Redefining graduate employability and work-integrated learning: Proposals for effective higher education in disrupted economies
By B. Oliver. 2015
202 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Employability features more prominently on the agenda of higher education institutions when the economy falters or changes: the majority of students, and their families, expect a degree to deliver a career pathway as well as an education. This paper explores some of the trends and predictions in the rapidly changing world of work and proposes a re-worked definition of employability (based on Yorke’s widely-accepted definition from 2006): that employability means that students and graduates can discern, acquire, adapt and continually enhance the skills, understandings and personal attributes that make them more likely to find and create meaningful paid and unpaid work that benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy. Likewise, work-integrated learning requires sharper definition than an ‘umbrella term’. This paper proposes that work-integrated learning includes a range of learning tasks that either resemble those expected of working graduates in their early careers, or are proximal to the workplaces or spaces, physical or digital, where professional work occurs. Determining the appropriate spread of tasks across a degree is best done by mapping assessments, ensuring there are more high level tasks in the latter years so that students are prompted to focus on the skills, understandings and personal attributes that make them more likely to find and create meaningful paid and unpaid work that benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy.
Subfields: Education, Management of Technology and Innovation, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/850eb9765dc6d01a1b2ddc2604111ce44020ad3c
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Education
In Management of Technology and Innovation
In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management
Citations in the corpus
- Want students to engage? Contextualise graduate learning outcomes and assess for employability (2018, background): “That course enhancement process has been described in detail elsewhere (Oliver, 2015a).”
- Fostering Graduate Employability: Rethinking Tanzania’s University Practices (2021, background): “The role of universities in graduate employability, especially work-integrated learning (WIL) and employability, has been intensively studied in developed countries, particularly in the last 5 years (Bennett, 2019; Ferns & Lilly, 2015; Jackson, 2016; Oliver, 2015; Oliver & Jorre de St Jorre, 2018; R”
- Authentic assessment in business education: its effects on student satisfaction and promoting behaviour (2018, background): “Students’ satisfaction refers to the recognition that they have met, or are meeting, their goal of increasing their employability throughout their study experience (Oliver 2015; Thomas and Bain 1984).”