Employability in Higher Education: What It Is, What It Is Not

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Learning &
Employability
Employability in higher
education: what it is –
what it is not
Mantz Yorke
SERIES ONE

Learning and Employability Series 1 and 2
The Learning and Employability series is primarily intended for staff in higher education
institutions who are considering the enhancement of student employability. The publications
will also be of interest to colleagues new to the area as well as those who are already
engaged in developing employability and who wish to broaden their understanding of the topic.
In response to demand we have updated and reissued a number of titles from the first series
of Learning and Employability, originally published by the Learning and Teaching Support
Network (LTSN) and the Enhancing Student Employability Co-ordination Team (ESECT). We
welcome suggestions for new titles in the series: email employability@heacademy.ac.uk.
Titles currently available are:
SERIES 1
Employability and higher education: what it is – what it is not (Mantz Yorke)
Employability: judging and communicating achievements (Peter Knight and Mantz
Yorke)
Embedding employability into the curriculum (Mantz Yorke and Peter Knight)
Entrepreneurship and higher education: an employability perspective (Neil
Moreland)
Employability and work-based learning (Brenda Little and ESECT Colleagues)
Pedagogy for employability (The Pedagogy for Employability Group)
SERIES 2
Work-related learning in higher education (Neil Moreland)
Employability for research postgraduates (Janet Metcalfe and Alexandra Gray)
Employability and part-time students (Brenda Little)
Ethics and employability (Simon Robinson)
The series editor is Professor Mantz Yorke.
The Employability Research and Publications Advisory Board reviews all Higher Education
Academy Employability publications, and comprises Professor Mant Yorke (Chair),
Professor Peter Knight (Open University), Professor Lee Harvey (Sheffield Hallam
University), Brenda Little (CHERI), Professor Kate Purcell (University of the West of
England), Jane Artess (Graduate Prospects), Rob Ward (Centre for Recording
Achievement) and Val Butcher from the Higher Education Academy.
Copy-editing has been undertaken by Dr Donald Millar (formerly of the University of
Leeds) and Peter Thomas.
The Learning and Employability series is being extended by the Higher Education
Academy and will reflect changing challenges and priorities in the relationship between
higher education and the many work opportunities likely to need – or benefit from –
graduate or postgraduate abilities.
The views expressed in this series are those of the authors and not necessarily those of
the Higher Education Academy.

1. Introduction 2
2. Preview of key points 2
3. Higher education and the economy 3
4. What do labour markets want of higher education? 4
5. Unpacking employability 5
5.1 Employability is not the same as employment
5.2 Employability as curricular process
5.3 Employability as achievement (and potential)
6. A definition and an elaboration 8
7. Alternative approaches to defining employability 9
8. Is it inevitable that employers will be dissatisfied? 10
9. The risk of being simplistic: core, key and transferable skills 11
9.1 Core and key skills
9.2 ‘Transferable’ skills
10. Employability is complex 13
References 15
Notes 18
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1. Introduction
This guide is intended to serve two purposes. First, it makes a case for employability as a
set of achievements which constitute a necessary but not sufficient condition for the gaining
of employment (which is dependent, inter alia, on the contemporary state of the economy).
Employability is, on the analysis presented here, considerably more complex than some
proponents of ‘core’, ‘key’ and ‘transferable’ skills have suggested, and is strongly aligned
with the academic valuing of good learning. The second purpose is consequential, in that
this publication has considerable implications for curricular activities in higher education,
which are the subject of other publications in the Learning and Employability series.
The relationship between higher education and the economy has, for a long time, been a
topic of debate, and the historical perspective is outlined in Sections 2 and 3. Sections 4
to 6 discuss the concept of employability, with a preferred definition being put forward in
Section 5. Section 7 suggests that, whilst employers might ask for multi-competent
graduates, some aspects of employment-related capability can only be developed in the
employment context: work placements of various kinds during a higher education
programme may however make a significant contribution. Sections 8 and 9 together
constitute a challenge to simplistic thinking about skills.
The hard-pressed academic who is concerned to ‘get the flavour’ of the argument may
find sufficient for immediate purposes in Sections 5, 8 and 9.
2. Preview of key points
• The relationship between higher education and the economy is longstanding.
• Employers generally see a graduate’s achievements related to the subject discipline as
necessary but not sufficient for them to be recruited. In some employment contexts the
actual subject discipline may be relatively unimportant. Achievements outside the
boundaries of the discipline (such as the possession of so-called ‘soft skills’) are
generally considered to be important in the recruitment of graduates.
• ‘Employability’ refers to a graduate’s achievements and his/her potential to obtain a
‘graduate job’, and should not be confused with the actual acquisition of a ‘graduate job’
(which is subject to influences in the environment, a major influence being the state of
the economy).
• Employability derives from complex learning, and is a concept of wider range than those
of ‘core’ and ‘key’ skills.
• The ‘transferability’ of skills is often too easily assumed.
• There is some evidence to suggest that references to employability make the implicit
assumption that graduates are young people. The risk is of not considering employability
in respect of older graduates, who have the potential to bring a more extensive life-
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experience to bear.
• Employability is not merely an attribute of the new graduate. It needs to be continuously
refreshed throughout a person’s working life.
3. Higher education and the economy
The connection between higher education and the economy is long-standing. In its review
of higher education four decades ago, the Robbins Report (Robbins, 1963) opened its
presentation of four aims for higher education with the following:
We begin with instruction in skills suitable to play a part in the general division of labour.
Robbins (1963, para 25)
The Report placed this aim first in order to counter the risk that the importance of higher
education for the economy might have been ignored or undervalued, and it went on to
offer the view that few would enter higher education without an eye to subsequent
employment. The much more recent Dearing Report (NCIHE, 1997) drew particular
attention to the vital role that higher education plays in a modern economy. Global
competitiveness, it asserted, required that:
Education and training [should] enable people in an advanced society to compete with
the best in the world (NCIHE, 1997, para 1.11).
The employability of graduates1has become an aim that governments around the world
have, to varying extents, imposed on national higher education systems. This interest in
employability reflects an acceptance of human capital theory (see Becker, 1975). Under
human capital theory, the task of government is to foster conditions that encourage growth
in the stock of human capital, since this is seen as vital to the performance of knowledge-
based economies in a globalised society. A report from the Treasury puts it succinctly:
Human capital directly increases productivity by raising the productive potential of
employees. [. . .] Improving skills and human capital is important in promoting growth,
both as an input to production and by aiding technological progress. This has been
recognised both in endogenous growth theory and also in empirical studies comparing
growth in different countries (HM Treasury, 2000, pp.26, 32).
A previous Secretary of State for Education and Employment has claimed that a failure to
develop people has contributed to the UK’s ‘productivity shortfall’:
In part [the shortfall] reflects lower investment in physical capital. But in part it also
reflects less investment in human capital – a less well-educated, less well-trained
workforce (Blunkett, 2001, n.p.).
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One important source of knowledge growth is the learning-by-doing that takes place in
innovative workplaces (HM Treasury, 2000, p.45). Another is the higher education system.
The higher education system is subject to governmental steer, one form of which is to
give an emphasis to the enhancement of the employability of new graduates.
Some commentators have questioned these assumptions, asking whether human capital
is the key to economic well-being (Morley, 2001) and whether ‘employability’ is anything
but an empty concept. Even if the concept has value, there are questions whether higher
education can develop employability as governments suppose (Atkins, 1999). Although
these challenges have force, the notion of employability has far too much face validity for
politicians to abandon it.
4.What do labour markets
want of higher education?
When trying to appreciate higher education’s potential for contributing to economic well-
being it is helpful to distinguish between the formation of subject-specific understandings
and skills2and the promotion of other valued skills, qualities and dispositions. Whereas
the world of employment has, by and large, been satisfied with the disciplinary
understanding and skills developed as a consequence of participation in higher education,
it has been less happy with the development of what have been termed ‘generic skills’,
such as communication, team-working and time-management.
Harvey et al. (1997) showed that employers in the UK tended to value generic skills more
highly than disciplinary-based understanding and skills. Whether the disciplinary aspect
was being taken for granted by respondents to their survey is unclear. As Brown et al.
(2002) quote one human resources manager:
Academic qualifications are the first tick in the box and then we move on. Today we
simply take them for granted. Brown (et al. 2002, p.19).
For some employers (the computer industry and social work provide two contrasting
examples), disciplinary knowledge and understanding are vital. Indeed, in the field of
information technology, accreditation by major companies is competing with awards from
higher education (Adelman, 2001), corporate universities are growing in the USA, and the
NHSU3may have been a straw in the wind for the UK as well. For other employers, a
general ‘graduateness’ (HEQC, 1997) appears to be deemed to be sufficient, which
should be understood to include the possession of general dispositions, qualities and
skills. (Purcell and Pitcher, 1996, noted that for many years over 40% of advertisements
for ‘graduate jobs’ had been more or less indifferent to applicants’ subject of study.) In
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these circumstances, the message seems to have been ‘give us a bright and engaged
graduate, and we will build specific expertise for this organisation on top of that’.
This is consistent with the views of Reich4(1991, 2002). In his more recent work, he
argued that advanced economies need two sorts of high-level expertise: one emphasising
discovery and the other focusing on exploiting the discoveries of others through market-
related intelligence and the application of interpersonal skills.
He suggested in his earlier work that these professionals, whom he described as
‘symbolic analysts’, shared a series of achievements. Symbolic analysts, he said, are
imaginative and creative, have at their fingertips relevant disciplinary understanding and
skills and the ‘soft’ or generic skills that enable the disciplinary base to be deployed to
optimal effect. Higher education’s key contribution to national prosperity lies in
development of graduates with such achievement at their disposal. This means that
undergraduate programmes should be concerned with four areas in particular:
• abstraction (theorising and/or relating empirical data to theory, and/or using formulae,
equations, models and metaphors);
• system thinking (seeing the part in the context of the wider whole);
• experimentation (intuitively or analytically); and
• collaboration (involving communication and team-working skills).
Educational institutions are not always successful in preparing learners for the complexity
inherent in the two main sorts of activity that Reich attributes to symbolic analysts’ role.
Learners are often expected to learn what is put in front of them and to work individually
and competitively, and subject matter may be compartmentalised. Plainly, the education of
symbolic analysts – who are likely to be those at the leading edge of economic
developments of one kind or another – requires that institutions make a particular effort to
foster the achievements that Reich highlighted.
Higher education is, however, not only about the education of symbolic analysts. There
are other ways in which it can contribute to economic development. As well as preparing
graduates and diplomates for employment-related roles of various kinds (and definitely not
only that of the symbolic analyst), it has an acknowledged role in lifelong learning – for
example, in educating further the middle manager so that he or she can manage more
effectively, in ‘upskilling’ the teacher or process worker, facilitating the development of
active citizenship, and so on.
5. Unpacking employability
There are many interpretations of ‘employability’. Those identified by Pierce (2002) and
through ESECT’s work are summarised in Table 1.
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In this Table, there are arguably three superordinate constructs of employability that map
somewhat fuzzily on to the listed items:
• employability as demonstrated by the graduate actually obtaining a job;
• employability as the student being developed by his or her experience of higher
education (i.e. it is a curricular and perhaps extra-curricular process); and
• employability in terms of the possession of relevant achievements (and, implicitly,
potential).
Each is discussed in turn.
5.1 Employability is not the same as employment
In the UK, a key performance indicator is the proportion of graduates obtaining jobs
(HEFCE, 2001) – any jobs, rather than what would normatively be accepted as ‘graduate
jobs’. However, as Purcell and Elias (2002) point out, graduates from different disciplinary
backgrounds tend to differ in the time they take to get a ‘graduate job’, and for some the
period of searching may take much longer than a few months. Local and regional
fluctuations in economic buoyancy are superimposed on the national economic position,
making employment in any case a problematic indicator. Their data show that, although
the number of graduates entering the labour market has increased dramatically over the
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Pierce, 2002
• Graduates obtaining jobs (measurable
to some extent through first destination
surveys)
• Students being prepared for
employment
• Students gaining work experience
(formal or informal, structured or not)
• Vocational [relevance]
• Students becoming equipped with a
defined range of skills
ESECT
• Getting a (graduate) job
• Possession of vocational degree
• Formal work experience
• Good use of non-formal work
experience and/or voluntary work
• Possession of ‘key skills’ or suchlike
• Skilful career planning and interview
technique
• A mix of cognitive and non-cognitive
achievements and representations
Table 1

Employability in higher education: what it is – what it is not
last 25 years, these patterns are not recent creations caused by over-supply – getting a
graduate job has, for some time, been an irregular and sometimes slow process. The
Linke Report from Australia is worth quoting at length on the issue:
Whether at the aggregate level or by field of study there are serious problems in
attempting to interpret institutional differences in graduate employment. There is clearly
a need for a better understanding of the relative impact of regional economic,
institutional, field of study and individual background factors on initial employment
patterns before any meaningful interpretation could be made of institutional differences.
And even then it would be necessary to monitor trends over time rather than rely on
data from a single year. None of this, however, is to deny the potential value of
employment data at the system level, where it has an obvious and essential role to
play in both economic and educational planning. […] Rather it suggests that as yet
little meaning can be attached to differential employment status of graduates in terms
of specific institutional factors, and therefore this data does not yet provide a useful
indicator for institutional comparisons (Linke, 1991, Vol. 1, p.89).
The argument – and the problems – seem to be as valid today as when the empirical
research was being undertaken for this report.
However, employability implies something about the capacity of the graduate to function in
a job, and is not to be confused with the acquisition of a job, whether a ‘graduate job’ or
otherwise. (Of course, all things being equal, the more employable graduates should be
quicker to settle into graduate jobs.)
5.2 Employability as curricular process
It is a mistake to assume that provision of experience, whether within higher education or
without, is a sufficient condition for enhanced employability. To have work experience, say,
does not, of itself, ensure that the student develops (further) the various prerequisites
(cognitive, social, practical, etc.) for success in employment. The same argument applies
to whole curricula. The curricular process may facilitate the development of prerequisites
appropriate to employment, but does not guarantee it. Hence it is inappropriate to assume
that students are highly employable on the basis of curricular provision alone: it may be a
good harbinger but it is not an assurance of employability. Employability derives from the
ways in which the student learns from his or her experiences. This points towards the third
of the superordinate constructs noted above.
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5.3 Employability as achievement (and potential)
The student exhibits employability in respect of a job if he or she can demonstrate a set of
achievements relevant to that job. The Business Studies graduate who has a vestigial
grasp of quantitative techniques would not, for example, be appropriate for a market
research post in which statistical analysis would figure strongly. He or she might, however,
make a valuable contribution in human relations. This illustrates the context-dependence
of employability. A repertoire of attributes and achievements may have a general value,
but may well prove insufficient for some specific situations5.
On the perspective being taken here, employability is a (multi-faceted) characteristic of the
individual. It is, after all, the individual whose suitability for a post is appraised6.
6.A definition and an elaboration
In this guide, and in others of this series, the following working definition of employability
is being used in the light of the position taken in the preceding section. Employability is
taken as:
a set of achievements – skills, understandings and personal attributes – that makes
graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen
occupations, which benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and the
economy.
There are a number of points to be made regarding this working definition.
1. It is probabilistic. There is no certainty that the possession of a range of desirable
characteristics will convert employability into employment: there are too many
extraneous socio-economic variables for that (e.g. national, regional and/or local
economic health, and the demand/supply ratio for the characteristics in question).
2. ‘Skills’ and ‘knowledge’ should not be construed in narrow terms. The richness of these
concepts is elaborated below, and in the companion guide, Embedding employability
into the curriculum.
3. The gaining of a ‘graduate job’, and success in it, should not be conflated. Higher
education awards describe the graduate’s past performance but some achievements
vital for workplace success might not be covered, not least because of the difficulty of
placing a grade on aspects such as drive, co-operative working and leadership. Large
organisations may be able to fill in any gaps by recruiting through assessment centres,
which use a greater range of (expensive) assessment techniques.
4. The choice of occupation is, for many graduates, likely to be constrained. They may
have to accept that their first choice of post is not realistic in the prevailing
circumstances, and aim instead for another option that calls on the skills etc. they have
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developed. (Note here the value to the graduate of adaptability and flexibility.)
5. It may not be possible to maximise the benefits to all interested parties. The employer’s
interest in appointing a graduate implies its self-interest in maximising the benefit. The
returns to the individual and the community are, from the employer’s perspective,
second-order, and the contribution of the individual appointee to the economy as a
whole will be diffused to the point of invisibility (though, of course, human capital theory
would expect economic benefit from the totality of appointments made by employers).
7.Alternative approaches to
defining employability
Hillage and Pollard (1998) work towards a definition that is broadly similar to that adopted
above. In the context of this guide, their account is taken to refer to what is needed to
secure ‘graduate jobs’.
Employability, to them, is about three abilities:
• gaining initial employment
• maintaining employment
• obtaining new employment if required.
In the context of this guide, this point can be taken as referring to ‘graduate jobs’. They
summarise this by saying that employability is the capability to move self-sufficiently within
the labour market to realise potential through sustainable employment (Hillage and Pollard
1998, p.2).
Brown et al. (2002) criticise this view as being ideologically loaded, arguing that it does
not acknowledge that the condition of local, national and international labour markets is a
powerful determinant of graduates’ success. It seems, however, that they are confusing
employability and employment. This could stem from Hillage and Pollard’s use of the
ambiguous term ‘capability’. ‘Capability’ can suggest, first, ‘potential’ or ‘necessary
characteristics’ or, secondly, getting employment which then attests to possession of those
characteristics. Hillage and Pollard seem to be covering both, Brown et al. seem to have
taken the second, and this guide leans towards the first.
Following Brown and colleagues’ argument through, the individual’s characteristics affect
the extent to which – in the abstract – they may be employable, but the labour market and
other considerations affect the probability that the graduate will be successful. They
express this somewhat differently. They see employability as a combination of the
absolute and the relative: the absolute dimension relates to the individual’s characteristics,
the relative dimension relates to the state of the labour market. Following Hirsch (1977)7,
they point out that, where many possess degrees, a degree confers no positional
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advantage in the labour market: ‘at best, it enables the individual to stay in the race’
(Brown et al. 2002, p.9). To which the riposte, following Evelyn Waugh, might be ‘Up to a
point, Lord Copper’, since the institution a graduate attended has a positional value. As
Hesketh (2000) points out, some employers have a list of institutions from which they
prefer to select graduates – and criteria such as the match of a curriculum to the
employer’s business and the reputation of the institution can affect the graduate’s
chances. Further, when a high proportion of the population has a degree, selection
procedures can call into play criteria that reproduce a (maybe implicitly) preferred
composition of the organisation’s workforce (see Brown and Scase, 1994, p.130ff.).
Hence Brown and colleagues offer a different definition of employability: The relative
chances of finding and maintaining different kinds of employment. (Brown et al. 2002, p.9).
The Access to What? Project (Blasko et al., 2002) shows that these relative chances are
not the same for all students with equivalent qualifications – some groups face systematic
labour market disadvantage. By the same token, though, the programme choices that
students make, and their aspirations, also affect their relative chances. UK initiatives to
widen participation in higher education recognise that it is important to inform choices and
aspirations, preparing those from disadvantaged groups to compete effectively in the
labour market.
Brown and colleagues’ definition does, however, imply some detachment from a major
(some politicians might say ‘the key’) task that faces higher education – that of helping
students to maximise the chances that they will succeed in the labour market. Higher
education can contribute significantly to Brown and colleagues’ ‘absolute’ dimension of
graduate employability, even though its contribution to the ‘relative’ dimension is
necessarily indirect.
8. Is it inevitable that employers
will be dissatisfied?
The grumbles of employers about the quality of graduates have been longstanding,
though the evidence on the issue is uneven (Hesketh, 2000). Less well researched is the
extent to which graduates may be dissatisfied with their lack of preparedness for the world
of work. Initial findings from a survey of new graduates funded by HEFCE suggest that
they experience difficulty with verbal8communication, time management and ‘task
juggling’ (Leon, 2002)9.
The dissatisfactions exist in relation to the transition between two kinds of culture, and
may persist however much higher education is prevailed upon to address the
‘employability agenda’. The reason for this view is that much employability-related learning
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occurs at the workplace, and not in a higher education institution. There are, of course,
various approaches to bridging the gap, such as sandwich programmes and periods of
work experience – but to exploit these to the full requires a degree of engagement by both
employers and higher education that may not be achievable in practice.
The best that can realistically be achieved may be for higher education to facilitate the
development in students of the understandings, skills and attributes that will help them to
make a success of their careers. There comes a point in students’ lives when they have to
make a step-change: higher education can take them so far, but then they have to deal
with the challenges that employment throws up. The situation is a bit like a rocket-
powered aircraft being lifted by a conventional one up into the stratosphere so that it can
maximise its performance at altitude without a prohibitive expenditure of fuel to get there.
This view implies that there will, in most cases, be a discrepancy between what employers
would ideally like (a graduate perfectly attuned to their needs) and what higher education
can reasonably supply (a graduate prepared, in both senses of the word, to learn what the
employer wants, and to perform accordingly). The corollary is that the employer has to
expect that the graduate will need to be inducted into the particular organisational culture
and given the support to succeed10.
9.The risk of being simplistic:
core, key and transferable skills
This section addresses in general terms what the achievements of highly employable
graduates are. Other guides in this series offer more detailed suggestions.
9.1 Core and key skills
In recent years, much has been made of the desirability of students acquiring skills.
Despite having a fairly wide view of employability, the Dearing Report (NCIHE, 1997)
chose to focus attention in its recommendations on the key skills of communication,
numeracy, the use of information technology and learning how to learn. An inspection of
Dearing’s key skills shows that the first three are qualitatively different from the last. The
first three can be seen as practical abilities that can fairly directly be demonstrated with
degrees of skilfulness, whereas the last is primarily a self-enhancing ability that stands in
a meta-relation to skilful practices in the workplace11.
The Dearing approach to key skills is symptomatic of a widespread failure to underpin key
skills with theory. Various lists of skills appear in the literature relating to employment12, but
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they seem to have been produced on an ad hoc basis. Wolf (2002, p.117ff) traces the
public emphasis on skills in higher education back to 1989, when Kenneth Baker13
delivered a speech to the Association of Colleges in Further and Higher Education. Even
though Baker himself seems to have forgotten ‘core skills’ (the preferred terminology at
that time) fairly quickly, others in the business world and the political process pressed
ahead in advocating them. The National Council for Vocational Qualifications built into a
competence-based approach to National Vocational Qualifications (NVQ) curricula its own
list of six core skills which it envisaged as being achievable at a hierarchy of levels, with
assessment becoming more technically accurate as a result14. However, a range of
theoretical objections and problems in implementing these core skills, inter alia, gradually
discredited the NVQ approach.
The Review of qualifications for 16-19 year olds (Dearing, 1996) mutated core skills into
key skills, and led to qualifications that were supposed to overcome the long-asserted
failure of young people to develop into fully effective employees. These key skills, it turned
out, were also not without their difficulties. However, with problems of implementation
necessarily showing up some time after promotion, it is perhaps not surprising that the
notion of key skills migrated into the Dearing-led review of higher education that
subsequently took place.
9.2 ‘Transferable’ skills
In the 1980s attention was given to ‘transferable’ or ‘generic’ skills. The basic idea was
that skills learned in one context could fairly readily be transferred to another, and this is
captured in a definition put forward by the then Training Agency, which saw transferable
skills as:
the generic capabilities which allow people to succeed in a wide range of different
tasks and jobs15 (Training Agency, 1990, p.5).
In an early discussion of transferability, Bridges (1993) differentiated between skills that
were essentially context-independent (the use of word processing, say) and those that
were context-dependent16. Context-dependent skills can be exemplified by behaviour that
might be appropriate in one context (for example, challenging received wisdom in higher
education) but that might not be well received in another (challenging an employer’s way
of going about things). Far from transfer being a simple translation, its potential
applicability required an appreciation of how the change in context might impact. In the
same vein, a recent analysis by Hinchliffe (2002) insists on the importance of developing
situational understandings that are (at least potentially) able to cater for the
unpredictability of happenings in the world.
Consideration of context-dependency led Bridges to a further category of skills which he
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termed ‘transferring skills’ – higher order skills that enable the person ‘to select, adapt,
adjust and apply [his or her] other skills to different situations, across different social
contexts and perhaps similarly across different cognitive domains’ (Bridges, 1993, p.50).
He points out that the exercise of ‘transferring skills’ involves very sophisticated
personal/intellectual achievements that are much more attuned to professional behaviour
than ‘the atomistic list of "competencies" towards which we are sometimes invited to direct
our enthusiasm’ (ibid., p.51). This is another way of describing metacognition or self-
regulation.
Whilst much writing on transferable or generic skills contains little more than ‘wish lists’
constructed by interested parties, it is worth drawing attention here to two approaches
which do try to make connections between employability and theories of learning: Bennett
and colleagues’ (2000) model linking
• disciplinary content
• disciplinary skills
• workplace experience
• workplace awareness
• generic skills
and Knight and Yorke’s (2002, 2004) USEM model which interrelates
• understanding
• skills
• efficacy beliefs, personal skills and qualities
• metacognition.
More is said about these models in the guide, Embedding employability into the curriculum.
10. Employability is complex
The position taken in this guide is that employability goes well beyond the simplistic notion
of key skills, and is evidenced in the application of a mix of personal qualities and beliefs,
understandings, skilful practices and the ability to reflect productively on experience.
Notice that the commonly used terms ‘knowledge’ and ‘skills’ are not used. They have
been replaced by ‘understandings’ and ‘skilful practices’ respectively, in order to signal the
importance of a rich appreciation of the relevant field(s) and of the ability to operate in
situations of complexity and ambiguity. There is a parallel here with Stephenson’s (1998)
suggestion that the capable person can work effectively on unfamiliar problems in
unfamiliar contexts as well as on familiar problems in familiar contexts (which is really a
matter of routine).
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Given that this account of employability stresses complexity, it follows that a pedagogy for
employability (and the associated assessment)
(a) needs to take the inherent complexity of the construct into account, and
(b) will be promoting similar achievements to those that teachers in higher education
tend to value.
Aspects of curriculum practice are addressed in the companion guides.
Much of the discussion of employability implicitly refers to the full-time student who enters
higher education at around the age of 18 and who graduates at the age of 21 or 22, and
deals with matters beyond the boundaries of the subject discipline(s) concerned. For older
students (many of who will opt to study part-time), employability may take on a different
colouring, since they may well have experienced employment and/or voluntary work prior to
(or whilst they are) engaging in higher education. For them, the emphasis that they give to
employability may be on the development of subject-specific understanding to complement
what they have already learned about employability in general17. There is also a need to
acknowledge the employment-relevant learning that ostensibly full-time students derive
from part-time employment as they seek to fund their passage through higher education18.
Students, therefore, will develop their employability in ways that reflect their particular
circumstances. It might be hoped that they would become ‘capable’ in the sense outlined
by Stephenson (1998):
Capable people have confidence in their ability to
1.take effective and appropriate action,
2.explain what they are seeking to achieve,
3.live and work effectively with others, and
4.continue to learn from their experiences, both as individuals and in association with
others, in a diverse and changing society. [. . .]
Capability is a necessary part of specialist expertise, not separate from it. Capable people
not only know about their specialisms, they also have the confidence to apply their
knowledge and skills within varied and changing situations and to continue to develop
their specialist knowledge and skills . . . (Stephenson, 1998, p.2, minor presentational
changes made).
Stephenson’s words point beyond employability at the moment of graduation towards
employability in the context of lifelong learning (a point that is implicit in all the definitions
of employability discussed above). Though contemporary attention is focused on the
transition between higher education and employment, it is important to remember that –
as RSPCA stickers in the rear windows of cars provide reminders in respect of pets –
employability, for most people, is for life.
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Employability in higher education: what it is – what it is not
References
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industry certification in Information Technology. Tertiary Education and Management 7(3),
277-292.
Atkins, M. (1999) Oven-ready and self-basting: taking stock of employability skills.
Teaching in Higher Education, 4(2), 267-280.
Becker, G.S. (1975) Human capital. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Bennett, N., Dunne, E. and Carré, C. (2000) Skills development in higher education and
employment. Buckingham: SRHE and Open University Press.
Blasko, Z. with Brennan, J, Little, B. and Shah, T. (2002) Access to what: analysis of
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Centre for Higher Education Research and Information.
Bloom, B.S. (1956) Taxonomy of educational objectives. Handbook 1: cognitive domain.
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Blunkett, D. (2001) Education into employability: the role of the DfEE in the economy.
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Education, 18 (1), 43-51.
Brown, P., Hesketh, A. and Williams, S. (2002) Employability in a knowledge-driven
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Innovation in education for employability held at Manchester Metropolitan University.
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Harvey, L. Moon, S. and Geall, V. with Bower, R. (1997) Graduates’ work: organisation
change and students’ attributes. Birmingham: Centre for Research into Quality together
with the Association of Graduate Recruiters.
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HEFCE (2001) Indicators of employment. Bristol: Higher Education Funding Council for
England, Report 01/21.
Hesketh, A.J. (2000) Recruiting an elite? Employers’ perceptions of graduate education
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Holmes, L. (2001) Reconsidering graduate employability: the Graduate Identity approach.
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Knight, P.T. and Yorke, M. (2002) Employability through the curriculum. Tertiary Education
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Pierce, D. (2002) Employability: higher education and careers services. Abridged version
of a report prepared for AGCAS (mimeo).
Purcell, K. and Elias, P. (2002) Seven years on… Making sense of the new graduate
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York, Higher Education Academy.
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Notes
1 The term ‘graduate’ is used generically in this paper to indicate any student who has left
higher education with an award up to and including the bachelor’s degree with honours
(hence undergraduate diplomates and graduates from foundation degrees are included).
2 The reference to ‘skills’ is made because of its widespread use, although there are
some strong objections to the term (e.g. Holmes, 2001; Hinchliffe, 2002).
3 This started its short life as the NHS University.
4 Robert Reich was Secretary of State for Labor under the first Clinton administration in
the US.
5 There is analogy to be made with the (now passé) notions of general and specific credit
in respect of academic progression: general credit was in some curricular circumstances
insufficient, and the student had to have acquired an appropriate amount of specific
credit in order to progress.
6 Partially hidden here are assumptions about assessment, which is the subject of the
guide, Embedding employability into the curriculum. Whilst high-stakes assessment
attests, more or less well, to students’ achievements, those selecting for employment
often assume that it predicts workplace performance. The predictive validity of
assessment is well known to be problematic, and heed should be taken of the warnings
typically given in advertisements for financial services: ‘Past performance is not
necessarily a guide to the future’.
7 The argument can be found in Hirsch (1977, p.41ff).
8 The inference is that ‘oral’ is meant, since students claimed strengths in written
communication.
9 The questionnaire was sent to 3171 graduates from full-time programmes in a range of
subjects, and elicited a 22% response rate. It is probable that time management and
task juggling are closely related.
10 Hesketh (2000, p.266) makes a similar point.
11 Interestingly, Hesketh (2000, p.253ff) provides evidence to suggest that employers may
be less concerned with the skills of numeracy and information technology than is
implicit in the Dearing Report’s (NCIHE, 1997) advocacy of them in respect of curricula
in higher education.
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Employability in higher education: what it is – what it is not
12 Some appear in Tuning the undergraduate curriculum, a working paper for the Skills
Plus project, which can be accessed via www.heacademy.ac.uk/945.htm
13 Then Secretary of State for Education.
14 This was part of a larger movement aimed at establishing outcomes-based education
for National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs). See Jessup (1991) for a description and
the guide, Embedding employability into the curriculum for an account of attendant
assessment problems.
15 Note the similarity to the definition of employability offered by Hillage and Pollard
(1998), above.
16 A similar distinction is drawn between ‘near transfer’ and ‘far transfer’.
17 The same general point applies to part-time students, many of whom will be studying
in parallel with being in employment. In the Open University, it has been suggested
that the bulk of some of its graduates’ claims to greater employability may come from
their work and life experiences, rather than from their academic achievements.
18 CRAC runs the Insight PlusTM programme to help students do this, and Student
Volunteering UK does a similar job for those doing voluntary work.
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Employability in higher education: what it is – what it is not
20 The Higher Education Academy Learning and Employability Series

Enhancing Student Employability
There are many definitions of what it is to be ‘employable’ and views on the processes
that develop this attribute. The Learning and Employability Series offers a wide range of
perspectives on the employability of graduates, based on the premise that, in higher
education, ‘employability’ is about good learning.
One of many definitions of employability is:
‘A set of skills, knowledge and personal attributes that make an individual more likely
to secure and be successful in their chosen occupation(s) to the benefit of themselves,
the workforce, the community and the economy.’
ESECT was an initiative to support the higher education sector in its efforts to develop
highly skilled, employable graduates who can contribute effectively to national prosperity
in the 21st century.
ESECT consisted of individuals with extensive experience of employability issues. The
team comprised representatives of stakeholder organisations including the National Union
of Students (NUS), the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR), the Association of
Graduate Careers Advisory Services (AGCAS), the Centre for Recording Achievement
(CRA) and the Higher Education Academy. It drew on the expertise of key researchers
and practitioners in the field including Professor Peter Knight, Professor Lee Harvey,
Brenda Little and Professor Mantz Yorke.
ESECT was funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England between
October 2002 and February 2005.
The Higher Education Academy is progressing the work to enhance the employability of
graduates developed in partnership with ESECT.
To find out more visit the Higher Education Academy Employability web pages:
www.heacademy.ac.uk/employability.htm
Employability in higher education: what it is – what it is not
The Higher Education Academy Learning and Employability Series

Higher education institutions are coming under increasing pressure to
ensure their graduates have relevant employability skills. Institutions are
also being encouraged to help students develop enterprise skills so that
more graduates have the confidence and knowledge to set up businesses.
Senior managers and academics are looking for support at all levels to
embed employability and enterprise into the higher education experience.
The Higher Education Academy is committed to helping institutions
improve the employability and entrepreneurship of all students.The
Academy has worked with a number of partners to provide a range of
tools and resources in these areas.
The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) funded the
Enhancing Student Employability Co-ordination Team (ESECT) to help the
sector engage with the employability policy. Its work began in September
2002 and finished at the end of February 2005.
ESECT dovetailed its plans with those of the Academy to provide a one-
stop-shop on employability matters.The priority was to strengthen links
with others committed to enhancing student employability.
Published by:
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Employability in higher education: what it is – what it is not
Learning and Employability Series 1
ISBN: 1-905788-01-0
Price: £10.00
© The Higher Education Academy, April 2006
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