Graduate Employability and Employment

Convenor: Dr Leonard Holmes, Roehampton University
Email: leonard.holmes@roehampton.ac.uk

The Graduate Employability & Employment Network aims to provide a forum for presentation and discussion of research related to graduate employment and employability.

In the context of major labour market changes, massification of HE, public sector funding constraints, and changes in the financing for HE, the relationship between higher education and graduates' employment and careers is clearly an important issue for Government, for students, for employers, and for higher education institutions. However, the nature of that relationship, particularly when expressed in terms of the notion of employability, is contestable. Such contestability arises at the level of the conceptual and theoretical, in terms of investigative methodologies, and in respect of the empirical evidence and its interpretation that may be deemed to warrant particular interventions at policy and practice levels.

Key questions for exploration within the Network include:

• How might we investigate the relationship between (a) the processes and practices of higher education and (b) students' post-graduation employment trajectories? What theoretical frameworks might help in such investigation? What are the methodological implications?
• How does the increasing focus on employment and employability affect higher education policy and practice? To what extent are the effects manifested differently in different arenas of policy and practice? Is that influence beneficial or perverse?

The Network will organise events such as seminars, workshops and conferences to promote discussion and dissemination of research in this field, and provide other opportunities for dissemination and debate particularly using electronic modes of communication.