Positionality of graduate employability

(2020 ID: 1910) Advancement in Research on Positionality of Graduate Emploability

Employability and, consequently, employment is one of the key issues that students want from higher education: a positive impact on their transitions into working life and access to economic benefits (e.g., Tomlinson 2017). However, both employment and the status of HE graduates as privileged occupants of high-quality employment have been challenged by the expansion of higher education and credential inflation. There is now a much larger and more diversified body of graduates in a crowded graduate labour market (e.g. Brown & Souto-Otero 2020; Brown et al. 2011).

Current developments render employability as a highly topical issue and in urgent need of critical and comprehensive investigation. The purpose of this symposium is to provide new insights into graduate employability by theorising the ‘positional competition’ (Brown et al. 2003; Bills 2016) and examining how graduates with various graduate degrees and background characteristics (class, gender, age) manage their labour market trajectories in different European contexts. Individual’s relative position, which is affected by education and other background characteristics (e.g., class, gender, age and ethnicity), has become a more important indicator of employability than her/his absolute educational credentials. Opportunities for graduates competing in the labour market do not depend only on their own skills, experience and abilities, but also on how other graduates act and the different forms of capital that they possess (Tholen 2015; Siivonen & Isopahkala-Bouret 2016).

This raises concerns about the distribution and equality of graduates’ labour market opportunities, as well as the traditional role of credentials in facilitating access to desired forms of employment (e.g. Tomlinson 2017; Komulainen et al. 2015; Siivonen & Isopahkala-Bouret 2016). The ‘horizons of opportunities’ of graduates with disadvantaged social background may not even include high-status jobs. On the other hand, students coming from academically educated families may enjoy middle-class advantage in relation to employability. This symposium aims specifically to draw attention to the relative chances of acquiring and maintaining different kinds of employment.

This symposium is an effort to advance research on positionality of education and employability. The contributors to this session represent three European country perspectives and a wide range of approaches, methodologies, and empirical work. The symposium begins with a paper by Gerbrand Tholen, about ‘social fit’ in hiring within graduate positions in England, predominantly in the London area. This presentation provides insight into recruiting consultants’ perspective. The two following papers provide higher education graduates’ points of view on positional competition in the employment market. First, Agnes van Zanten focuses on the narratives of graduates with a master’s degree from a French elite higher education institution who have a ‘diverse’ background. Analysis of Ulpukka Isopahkala-Bouret and Päivi Siivonen on gendered and classed ‘adding value’ narratives of graduates with a master’s degree from two top ranking Finnish business schools complete the paper presentations.

Bills, D. B. (2016). Congested credentials: The material and positional economies of schooling. Social Stratification and Mobility 43, 65–70. Brown, P., Hesketh, A. & Williams, S. (2003). Employability in knowledge-driven society. Journal of Education and Work 16, 107–1126. Brown, P., Lauder, H. & Ashton, D. N. (2011). The global auction: The broken promises of education, jobs and incomes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brown, P. & Souto-Otero, M. 2020. “The end of the credential society? An analysis of the relationship between education and the labour market using big data.” Journal of Education Policy 35(1): 95-118. Isopahkala-Bouret, U. (2018). Stratification through a binary degree structure in Finnish higher education. In Bloch, R., Mitterle, A., Paradeise, C. & Peter, T. (eds.) Universities and the production of Elites: Discourses, Policies, and Strategies of Excellence and Stratification in Higher Education. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 83 – 101. Siivonen, P. & Isopahkala-Bouret, U. (2016). Adult graduates’ negotiations of age(ing) and employability. Journal of Education and Work 29(3), 352–372. Tholen, G. (2015). What can research into graduate employability tell us about agency and structure? British Journal of Sociology of Education 36(5), 766–784. Tomlinson, M. (2017). Introduction: Graduate employability in context. In M. Tomlinson & L. Holmes (eds.) Graduate Employability in Context. Theory Research and Debate (pp. 1–40). London: Palgrave Macmillan.