Strangleman, T. (2007) The nostalgia for the permanence of work? 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. Future research directions on graduate employability will need to explore the way in which graduates employability and career progression is managed both by graduates and employers during the early stages of their careers. (2006) The evolution of the boundaryless career concept: Examining the physical and psychological mobility, Journal of Vocational Behavior 69 (1): 1929. HE has traditionally helped regulate the flow of skilled, professional and managerial workers. In terms of social class influences on graduate labour market orientations, this is likely to work in both intuitive and reflexive ways. They are (i) Business graduates require specific employability skills; (2) Curricular changes enhance . 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. Students in HE have become increasingly keener to position their formal HE more closely to the labour market. Brown, P. and Hesketh, A.J. Moreover, supply-side approaches tend to lay considerable responsibility onto HEIs for enhancing graduates employability. These negotiations continue well into graduates working lives, as they continue to strive towards establishing credible work identities. The New Right argues that liberal left politicians and welfare policies have undermined the . For much of the past decade, governments have shown a commitment towards increasing the supply of graduates entering the economy, based on the technocratic principle that economic changes necessitates a more highly educated and flexible workforce (DFES, 2003) This rationale is largely predicated on increased economic demand for higher qualified individuals resulting from occupational changes, and whereby the majority of new job growth areas are at graduate level. 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). The concerns that have been well documented within the non-graduate youth labour market (Roberts, 2009) are also clearly resonating with the highly qualified. The prominence is on developing critical and reflective skills, with a view to empowering and enhancing the learner. Young, M. (2009) Education, globalisation and the voice of knowledge, Journal of Education and Work 22 (3): 193204. Mass HE may therefore be perpetuating the types of structural inequalities it was intended to alleviate. The role of employers and employer organisations in facilitating this, as well as graduates learning and professional development, may therefore be paramount. Savage, M. (2003) A new class paradigm? British Journal of Sociology of Education 24 (4): 535541. (2006) showed that students choices towards studying at particular HEIs are likely to reflect subsequent choices. . As Little and Archer (2010) argue, the relative looseness in the relationship between HE and the labour market has traditionally not presented problems for either graduates or employers, particularly in more flexible economies such as the United Kingdom. For graduates, the inflation of HE qualifications has resulted in a gradual downturn in their value: UK graduates are aware of competing in relative terms for sought-after jobs, and with increasing employer demands. Chapter 1 1. One particular consequence of a massified, differentiated HE is therefore likely to be increased discrimination between different types of graduates. Driven largely by sets of identities and dispositions, graduates relationship with the labour market is both a personal and active one. Overall, consensus theory is a useful perspective for understanding the role of crime in society and the ways in which it serves as a means of defining and enforcing social norms and values. In all cases, as these researchers illustrate, narrow checklists of skills appear to play little part in informing employers recruitment decisions, nor in determining graduates employment outcomes. Such strategies typically involve the accruement of additional forms of credentials and capitals that can be converted into economic gain. Department for Education (DFE). Little and Arthur's research shows similar patterns among European graduates, there are generally higher levels of graduate satisfaction with HE as a preparation for future employment, as well as much closer matching up between graduates credentials and the requirements of jobs. Edvardsson Stiwne, E. and Alves, M.G. 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 . 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. In the context of a knowledge economy, consensus theory advocates that knowledge, skills and innovation are the driving factors of our society. The shift to wards a knowledge econo my where k nowledge workers However, there are concerns that the shift towards mass HE and, more recently, more whole-scale market-driven reforms may be intensifying class-cultural divisions in both access to specific forms of HE experience and subsequent economic outcomes in the labour market (Reay et al., 2006; Strathdee, 2011). Research by both Furlong and Cartmel (2005) and Power and Whitty (2006) shows strong evidence of socio-economic influences on graduate returns, with graduates relative HE experiences often mediating the link between their origins and their destinations. This was a model developed by Lorraine Dacre Pool and Peter Sewell in 2007 which identifies five essential elements that aid employability: Career Development Learning: the knowledge, skills and experience to help people manage and develop their careers. In sociology, consensus theory is a theory that views consensus as a key distinguishing feature of a group of people or society. On the other hand, less optimistic perspectives tend to portray contemporary employment as being both more intensive and precarious (Sennett, 2006). For graduates, the process of realising labour market goals, of becoming a legitimate and valued employee, is a continual negotiation and involves continual identity work. Ball, S.J. Reducing the system/structure down to the graduate labour market, there are parallels between Archer's work and consensus theory (Brown et al. Compelling evidence on employers approaches to managing graduate talent (Brown and Hesketh, 2004) exposes this situation quite starkly. Cardiff School of Social Sciences Working Paper 118. Rae, D. (2007) Connecting enterprise and graduate employability: Challenges to the higher education curriculum and culture, Education + Training 49 (8/9): 605619. Keynesian economics was developed by the British economist John Maynard Keynes . Research by Tomlinson (2007) has shown that some students on the point of transiting to employment are significantly more orientated towards the labour market than others. 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. 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 . 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. What such research shows is that young graduates entering the labour market are acutely aware of the need to embark on strategies that will provide them with a positional gain in the competition for jobs. Furlong, A. and Cartmel, F. (2005) Graduates from Disadvantaged Backgrounds: Early Labour Market Experiences, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The construction of personal employability does not stop at graduation: graduates appear aware of the need for continued lifelong learning and professional development throughout the different phases of their career progression. (2007) The transition from higher education into work: Tales of cohesion and fragmentation, Education + Training 49 (7): 516585. Moreover, in the context of flexible and competitive globalisation, the highly educated may find themselves forming part of an increasingly disenfranchised new middle class, continually at the mercy of agile, cost-driven flows in skilled labour, and in competition with contemporaries from newly emerging economies. Sennett, R. (2006) The Culture of New Capitalism, Yale: Yale University Press. Again, graduates respond to the challenges of increasing flexibility, individualisation and positional competition in different ways. The increasingly flexible and skills-rich nature of contemporary employment means that the highly educated are empowered in an economy demanding the creativity and abstract knowledge of those who have graduated from HE. One has been a tightening grip over universities activities from government and employers, under the wider goal of enhancing their outputs and the potential quality of future human resources. Theory could be viewed as a coherent group of assumptions or propositions put forth to . A consensus theory is one which believes that the institutions of society are working together to maintain social cohesion and stability. Article (2003) The Future of Higher Education, London: HMSO. A common theme has been state-led attempts to increasingly tighten the relationship and attune HE more closely to the economy, which itself is set within wider discourse around economic change. The differentiated and heterogeneous labour market that graduates enter means that there is likely to be little uniformity in the way students constructs employability, notionally and personally. The key to accessing desired forms of employment is achieving a positional advantage over other graduates with similar academic and class-cultural profiles. Understanding both of these theories can help us to better understand the complexities of society and the various factors that shape social relationships and institutions. Consensus Vs. The inter-relationship between HE and the labour market has been considerably reshaped over time. With increased individual expenditure, HE has literally become an investment and, as such, students may look to it for raising their absolute level of employability. His theory is thus known as demand-oriented approach. (2011) The Global Auction: The Broken Promises of Education, Jobs and Incomes, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Functionalism is a structural theory and posits that the social institutions and organization of society . Taylor, J. and Pick, D. (2008) The work orientations of Australian university students, Journal of Education and Work 21 (5): 405421. Keynes' theory of employment is a demand-deficient theory. The review has also highlighted the contested terrain around which debates on graduates employability and its development take place. Consensus theories posit that laws are created using group rational to determine what behaviors are deviant and/or criminal to protect society from harm. The perspective gained much currency in the mid 20th century in the works of Harvard sociologist Talcott Parsons, for whom . Brennan, J., Kogan, M. and Teichler, U. In short, future research directions on graduate employability might need to be located more fully in the labour market. Marginson, S. (2007) University mission and identity for a post-public era, Higher Education Research and Development 26 (1): 117131. 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. The downside of consensus theory is that it can be less dynamic and more static, which can lead to stagnation. This is particularly evident among the bottom-earning graduates who, as Green and Zhu show, do not necessarily attain better longer-term earnings than non-graduates. 2.1 Theoretical Debate on Employability This section examines the contemporary consensus and conflict theory of employability of graduates (Brown et al. Harvey, L., Moon, S. and Geall, V. (1997) Graduates Work: Organisational Change and Students Attributes, Birmingham: QHE. 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. Moreover, in such contexts, there is greater potential for displacement between levels of education and occupational position; in turn, graduates may also perceive a potential mismatch between their qualifications and their returns in the job market. 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