Cheng, Ming, Adekola, Olalekan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9747-0583, Albia, JoClarisse and Cai, Sanfa (2021) Employability in Higher Education: A Review of Key Stakeholders’ Perspectives. Higher Education Evaluation and Development.

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Abstract

Evaluation and Development 1 Employability in Higher Education: A Review of Key Stakeholders’ Perspectives Abstract Employability is a key concept in higher education. Graduate employment rate is often used to assess the quality of university provision, despite that employability and employment are two different concepts. This paper will increase the understandings of graduate employability through interpreting its meaning and whose responsibility for graduate employability from the perspectives of four key stakeholders: higher education institutions, students, government and employers. It reveals that responsibility for employability has been transferred by the UK government to HEIs despite clear evidence that it needs to be shared by all the key stakeholders to be effective. In addition, there is a gap between employers’ expectation for employability and the government’s employability agenda. This article highlights that solely using employment rate statistics as a key indicator for employability will encourage the practice of putting employers’ needs above knowledge creation and the development of academic disciplines, with the consequence that higher education will become increasingly vocation driven.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	Published
DOI:	10.1108/HEED-03-2021-0025
Subjects:	L Education > L Education (General)
School/Department:	School of Humanities
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/5360

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