The second relates to the biases employers harbour around different graduates from different universities in terms of these universities relative so-called reputational capital (Harvey et al., 1997; Brown and Hesketh, 2004). (2003) Class Strategies and the Education Market: The Middle Classes and Social Advantage, London: Routledge. Keynes' theory of employment is a demand-deficient theory. Harvey, L., Moon, S. and Geall, V. (1997) Graduates Work: Organisational Change and Students Attributes, Birmingham: QHE. Consensus is the collective agreement of individuals. The problem has been largely attributable to universities focusing too rigidly on academically orientated provision and pedagogy, and not enough on applied learning and functional skills. Knight, P. and Yorke, M. (2004) Learning, Curriculum and Employability in Higher Education, London: Routledge Falmer. Graduates clearly follow different employment pathways and embark upon a multifarious range of career routes, all leading to different experiences and outcomes. Department for Education Skills (DFES). This is likely to be carried through into the labour market and further mediated by graduates ongoing experiences and interactions post-university. This paper draws largely from UK-based research and analysis, but also relates this to existing research and data at an international level. Marginson, S. (2007) University mission and identity for a post-public era, Higher Education Research and Development 26 (1): 117131. 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. 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. Needless to say, critics of supply-side and skills-centred approaches have challenged the somewhat simplistic, descriptive and under-contextualised accounts of graduate skills. consensus theory of employability. A further policy response towards graduate employability has been around the enhancement of graduates skills, following the influential Dearing Report (1997). . 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. 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. The perspective gained much currency in the mid 20th century in the works of Harvard sociologist Talcott Parsons, for whom . Bowman, H., Colley, H. and Hodkinson, P. (2005) Employability and Career Progression of Fulltime UK Masters Students: Final Report for the Higher Education Careers Services Unit, Leeds: Lifelong Learning Institute. Keynes's theory suggested that increases in government spending, tax cuts, and monetary expansion could be used to counteract depressions. They also reported quite high levels of satisfaction among graduates on their perceived utility of their formal and informal university experiences. HE systems across the globe are evolving in conjunction with wider structural transformations in advanced, post-industrial capitalism (Brown and Lauder, 2009). However, these three inter-linkages have become increasingly problematic, not least through continued challenges to the value and legitimacy of professional knowledge and the credentials that have traditionally formed its bedrock (Young, 2009). 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. Employment relations is the study of the regulation of the employment relationship between employer and employee, both collectively and individually, and the determination . This changing context is likely to form a significant frame of reference through which graduates understand the relationship between their participation in HE and their wider labour market futures. Such strategies typically involve the accruement of additional forms of credentials and capitals that can be converted into economic gain. The New Right argument is that a range of government policies, most notably those associated with the welfare state, undermined the key institutions that create the value consensus and ensure social solidarity. Moreover, supply-side approaches tend to lay considerable responsibility onto HEIs for enhancing graduates employability. Consensus theory, on the other hand, looks at how individuals interact and how this can lead to agreement. 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. 2.1 Theoretical Debate on Employability This section examines the contemporary consensus and conflict theory of employability of graduates (Brown et al. Bourdieu, P. (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (2008) Graduate Employability: The View of Employers, London: Council for Industry and Higher Education. Moreover, there is evidence of national variations between graduates from different countries, contingent on the modes of capitalism within different countries. This is further raising concerns around the distribution and equity of graduates economic opportunities, as well as the traditional role of HE credentials in facilitating access to desired forms of employment (Scott, 2005). Moreover, this may well influence the ways in which they understand and attempt to manage their future employability. *1*.J\ Article Again, graduates respond to the challenges of increasing flexibility, individualisation and positional competition in different ways. Consensus v. conflict perspectives -Consensus Theory In general, this theory states that laws reflect general agreement in society. Yet the position of graduates in the economy remains contested and open to a range of competing interpretations. - 91.200.32.231. known as "Graduate Employability" (Harvey 2003; Yorke 2006). Wolf, A. This has been driven mainly by a number of key structural changes both to higher education institutions (HEIs) and in the nature of the economy. Accordingly, there has been considerable government faith in the role of HE in meeting new economic imperatives. The consensus theory emphasizes that the social order is through the shared norms, and belief systems of people. Bowman et al. French sociologist and criminologist Emile . 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. While investment in HE may result in favourable outcomes for some graduates, this is clearly not the case across the board. Debates on the future of work tend towards either the utopian or dystopian (Leadbetter, 2000; Sennett, 2006; Fevre, 2007). Smetherham, C. (2006) The labour market perceptions of high achieving UK graduates: The role of the first class credential, Higher Education Policy 19 (4): 463477. . What their research illustrates is that these graduates labour market choices are very much wedded to their pre-existing dispositions and learner identities that frame what is perceived to be appropriate and available. Argues that even employable people may fail to find jobs because of positional competition in the knowledge-driven economy. Morley (2001) however states that employability . In the flexible and competitive UK context, employability also appears to be understood as a positional competition for jobs that are in scarce supply. Morley ( 2001 ) nevertheless states that . (2011) Graduate identity and employability, British Educational Research Journal 37 (4): 563584. (1999) Higher education policy and the world of work: Changing conditions and challenges, Higher Education Policy 12 (4): 285312. Such changes have coincided with what has typically been seen as a shift towards a more flexible, post-industrialised knowledge-driven economy that places increasing demands on the workforce and necessitates new forms of work-related skills (Hassard et al., 2008). (2010) Overqualifcation, job satisfaction, and increasing dispersion in the returns to graduate education, Oxford Economic Papers 62 (4): 740763. Based on society's agreement - or consensus - on our shared norms and values, individuals are happy to stick to the rules for the sake of the greater good.Ultimately, this helps us achieve social order and stability. Studies of non-traditional students show that while they make natural, intuitive choices based on the logics of their class background, they are also highly conscious that the labour market entails sets of middle-class values and rules that may potentially alienate them. As a mode of cultural and economic reproduction (or even cultural apprenticeship), HE facilitated the anticipated economic needs of both organisations and individuals, effectively equipping graduates for their future employment. 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. Greenbank, P. (2007) Higher education and the graduate labour market: The Class Factor, Tertiary Education and Management 13 (4): 365376. 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. This is perhaps further reflected in the degree of qualification-based and skills mismatches, often referred to as vertical mismatches. 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). In the United Kingdom, as in other countries, clear differences have been reported on the class-cultural and academic profiles of graduates from different HEIs, along with different rates of graduate return (Archer et al., 2003; Furlong and Cartmel, 2005; Power and Whitty, 2006). While consensus theory emphasizes cooperation and shared values, conflict theory emphasizes power dynamics and ongoing struggles for social change. The problem of graduate employability and skills may not so much centre on deficits on the part of graduates, but a graduate over-supply that employers find challenging to manage. The development of mass HE, together with a range of work-related changes, has placed considerably more attention upon the economic value and utility of university graduates. For graduates, the challenge is being able to package their employability in the form of a dynamic narrative that captures their wider achievements, and which conveys the appropriate personal and social credentials desired by employers. For such students, future careers were potentially a significant source of personal meaning, providing a platform from which they could find fulfilment, self-expression and a credible adult identity. Consensus theories have a philosophical tradition dating . Part of this might be seen as a function of the upgrading of traditional of non-graduate jobs to accord with the increased supply of graduates, even though many of these jobs do not necessitate a degree. While mass HE potentially opens up opportunities for non-traditional graduates, new forms of cultural reproduction and social closure continue to empower some graduates more readily than others (Scott, 2005). poststructuralism, Positional Conflict Theory as well as liberalhumanist thought. In relation to the more specific graduate attributes agenda, Barrie (2006) has called for a much more fine-grained conceptualisation of attributes and the potential work-related outcomes they may engender. Expands the latter into positional conflict theory, which explains how the market for credentials is rigged and how individuals are ranked in it. (2009) Processes of middle-class reproduction in a graduate employment scheme, Journal of Education and Work 22 (1): 3553. Perhaps one consensus uniting discussion on the effects of labour market change is that the new knowledge-based economy entails significant challenges for individuals, including those who are well educated. 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. They construct their individual employability in a relative and subjective manner. This should be ultimately responsive to the different ways in which students themselves personally construct such attributes and their integration within, rather than separation from, disciplinary knowledge and practices. Recent comparative evidence seems to support this and points to significant differences between graduates in different national settings (Brennan and Tang, 2008; Little and Archer, 2010). The theory of employability can be difficult to identify; there can be many factors that contribute to the idea of being employable. starkly illustrate, there is growing evidence that old-style scientific management principles are being adapted to the new digital era in the form of a Digital Taylorism. According to conflict theory, employability represents an attempt to legitimate unequal opportunities in education, labour market at a time of growing income inequalities. Employability is a promise to employees that they will hold the accomplishments to happen new occupations rapidly if their occupations end out of the blue ( Baruch, 2001 ) . Chevalier, A. and Lindley, J. Naidoo, R. and Jamieson, I. Less positively, their research exposed gender disparities gap in both pay and the types of occupations graduates work within. This is further reflected in pay difference and breadth of career opportunities open to different genders. (2007) Round and round the houses: The Leitch review of skills, Local Economy 22 (2): 111117. Research in the field also points to increasing awareness among graduates around the challenges of future employability. 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). For some graduates, HE continues to be a clear route towards traditional middle-class employment and lifestyle; yet for others it may amount to little more than an opportunity cost. Graduates from different countries and open to different genders not the case across board. Contested and open to different experiences and interactions post-university other hand, looks at individuals! Needless to say, critics of supply-side and skills-centred approaches have challenged the somewhat simplistic, descriptive and under-contextualised of. 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