The paper argues for a sociological understanding of the role of partnership in corporate actors' engagement with Higher Education (HE) to recruit university graduates. Research shows that hiring practices vary systematically by graduates' institutional backgrounds, with elite firms preferring graduates from elite universities (Binder et al. 2016; Rivera, 2015). Yet by focusing predominantly on organisations and sectors, this literature overlooks how corporate partners establish networks with universities and shape access to graduate employment.

The aim of this paper is to clarify conceptually what recruitment partnerships and networks mean and how they work in the context of global higher education landscape. Our starting point is that profit-making is not universities’ primary purpose in building commercial recruitment partnerships. Such policies and practices serve a more complex set of goals and constituencies, such as the compelling contest between institutional status and rankings (Marginson 2016). Just like global corporations, global research universities (GRUs) strive to achieve high ranking and recognition within an international context, constructing institutional and social hierarchies under competitive pressure (e.g., Bloch et al., 2018; Rivera, 2015; Van Zanten et al., 2015). As a result, interconnections between universities and corporations, occur within both national and transnational spheres and characterise the positional competition in the global economy (Kauppinen et al., 2016; Brown et al., 2011).

For the purpose of conceptualising the role of university-corporate partnership networks in graduate recruitment, this paper takes a Bourdieusian approach in which higher education (HE) is seen as a ‘field’, that is, a structured space where different actors strategise regarding competitive positions and the unequal distribution of ‘capital’, while simultaneously reproducing social stratification (e.g., Isopahkala-Bouret & Tholen, 2023; Brown et al., 2011). Moreover, actors in the field are involved in a symbolic struggle over valued resources (e.g., Tholen, 2017). The field of HE itself is nested within broader sociopolitical and economic forces, which creates the backdrop of the highly complex setting in this study.

In sociological theory, ‘closure’ basically refers to exclusive processes of constructing social and symbolic boundaries to monopolise scarce resources for one group of people, while excluding others from using them (Tholen, 2017; van Zanten et al., 2015). ‘Elite closure’ in this study refers to incentives for high-status affiliations, that is, why GRUs prefer to connect with elite firms and vice versa and to create structured campus recruitment practices (Tzoc & Gondal, 2023; Kauppinen et al. 2016). The corporations, universities and individual graduates who identify themselves as part of the ‘global elite’ create alliances to further improve their distinct status (Binder et al., 2016; Rivera, 2015). However, the stigma associated with low-status affiliations disincentivises partnerships with less prestigious organisations for elite universities and corporations (Tzoc & Gondal, 2023).

This is a conceptual study based on sociological literature. It will provide a new conceptual model to understand the elite closure in university-corporate partnership to recruit university graduates. The paper provides analytical examples from earlier research literature to illustrate the evolving conceptual model.

The paper concludes that building close(d) networks with corporations is one of the key strategies for leading universities to strengthen their positional status. However, a strong presence in HE gives corporate actors influence over policy issues and control over the development of the future workforce (Tzoc & Condal, 2023; Kauppinen et al., 2016; Brown et al., 2011). Furthermore, corporate recruitment partnerships function like a headhunting agency, interlocking networks between a few select partners and creating semi-exclusive recruitment pathways to a small number of corporations (Tzoc & Gondal, 2023; Davis & Binder, 2016; Binder et al., 2016; Rivera 2015). Consequently, social inequalities in graduate recruitment grow. First, partnerships between highly ranked universities and elite corporations create hurdles for smaller firms, start-ups and public/third-sector employers to hire students from top universities. Second, highly skilled graduates from low-ranked universities that lack corporate recruitment partnerships may find their applications locked out of the preferred talent pool (Davis & Binder, 2016). Third, elite closure also occurs in the exchange between students and recruiting agencies at campus recruitment events, as students with the ‘right’ capitals benefit most from the recruitment ‘pipeline’ between universities and corporations. Finally, this paper contributes to the critical societal discussion, in Europe and beyond, on the transforming societal role of universities as they increasingly operate as intermediaries in labour market processes rather than as autonomous educational institutions. It addresses global challenges relating to the employment of a highly skilled workforce and the social inequalities embedded in corporate recruitment practices.

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