In recent years, rapid technological advancement has reshaped the nature of work. Pham and Jackson (2020, pp. 22-25) depicted the modern labour market with three major characteristics of “a knowledge-based economy, labour mobility, and new work arrangements and patterns”. This has distinguished the need for a relatively large share of highly educated and competent young skilled workforce (ILO, 2022).

Furthermore, higher education continues to demonstrate a positive association with labour market outcomes for individuals (OECD, 2023). However, traditional academic programs may not fully address employers’ contemporary requirements and expectations (Tushar & Sooraksa, 2023). On the other hand, the global massification of higher education since the mid-20^th century has dramatically increased the number of undergraduates entering labour markets. There are growing concerns about an imbalance between graduates and employment opportunities, leading to graduates being unemployed, underemployed, or overeducated (e.g., Hao & Wang, 2022; Marques et al., 2022). ILO (2024) highlights that these youth employment challenges may hinder economic growth, constrain opportunities for social mobility, and affect poverty alleviation efforts, particularly in developing economies. Individually, young people as NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training) may feel growing anxiety to push themselves towards extremism, and experience “scarring effects” that could undermine their wages and future career development.

Thus, enhancing graduate employability, i.e., the ability of graduates to secure, maintain, and succeed in changing labour markets (Tomlinson & Holmes, 2017), has become a critical mission for higher education worldwide (Abelha et al., 2020). Most nations have redirected their attention towards vocational education, endorsing it to revitalise the economy and enable just transitions to digital and green economies (Cedefop, 2020). This shift has led to the emergence of academic education with a vocational focus and/or elevated vocational education to the tertiary level.

An expanding body of literature has discussed graduate employability as a multifaceted concept. Tomlinson (2017) extended Bourdieu’s theory of capital (1986) to conceptualize the Graduate Capital Model, which comprises five interconnected dimensions: human, social, cultural, identity, and psychological capital, to depict graduate employability. In Tomlinson’s Graduate Capital Model, human capital denotes the knowledge, skills, and competencies that graduates acquire through education and training. Social capital encompasses the networks and relationships that graduates build and maintain. Cultural capital involves the accumulation of knowledge, behaviours, and dispositions that align with the workplace's cultural norms and values. Identity Capital refers to the personal investment graduates make in their career development. It encompasses the formation of work identities, career goals, and personal narratives that enable graduates to present themselves as employable candidates. Identity capital is crucial for career planning and setting oneself apart in the job market. Psychological capital refers to psychological resources, e.g., resilience, self-efficacy, adaptability, and optimism. These forms of capital interact with one another, enriching graduates’ overall employability and aiding their successful transition into the labour market.

Against this backdrop, this study sheds light on the role of higher vocational education in building and developing graduates’ employability by drawing on Tomlinson’s Graduate Capital Model (2017) and identifying countermeasures for higher education institutions to enhance graduate employability by identifying deficiencies in different forms of graduate capital from diverse perspectives. This study aims to explore the employability of vocational undergraduates in China, a field that remains under-researched. with the aim of enhancing the adapted Scale’s utility for graduates’ self-assessment and informing pedagogical and institutional strategies that support graduates’ successful education-to-work transition.

A mixed-methods approach with an explanatory sequential research design was employed to investigate the graduate employability landscape of vocational undergraduates in China through the lens of the Graduate Capital Model (Tomlinson, 2017). This study targeted 33 vocational universities in China that had final-year students and graduates as of 2025. Those are clustered into three groups based on their location’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita: developed, developing, and underdeveloped regions, since vocational education is sensitive to local contexts and local economic development has a great impact on higher vocational education. There are discrepancies in the development of higher vocational education in different regions of China (Wang et al., 2024). Through stratified random sampling, a total of 751 valid responses were collected in the quantitative strand using an online survey based on the validated and adapted 6-point Likert Graduate Capital Scale for multiple regression analysis. The original 45-item scale is grounded in Tomlinson’s Graduate Capital Model and was initially validated among students at elite universities in the United Kingdom. It has been contextually adapted (Li & Wright, 2025) through expert panel review and quantitatively validated in China’s undergraduate vocational education. The translated and adapted scale, comprising 33 items distributed across five interconnected forms of capital, was used to examine the graduate employability of vocational undergraduates and its association with labour market outcomes. Subsequently, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 36 final-year students and graduates, purposively recruited from the survey respondents, to provide supplementary qualitative insights into how employability is formed and developed within the context of undergraduate vocational education.

The findings revealed a consistent pattern of cumulative and reciprocal relationships among the five forms of capital underpinning the Graduate Capital Model, indicating that vocational undergraduates’ employability develops through an interconnected and evolving system of resources. Vocational undergraduates’ social networks were largely shaped by the knowledge, skills, and competencies they had acquired through education, and partially influenced by their exposure to professional norms and cultural values. Conversely, the development of vocational undergraduates’ acquired knowledge and skills is closely tied to the strength of their social networks and access to relational resources, suggesting a mutually reinforcing dynamic. Vocational undergraduates’ cultural understanding, self-concept, and psychological adaptability were found to operate as interconnected dimensions of graduate employability, each influencing and being influenced by the others. Within the Graduate Capital Model, human capital emerged as the principal driver of labour market outcomes, reflecting the enduring value of knowledge, skills, and competencies acquired through education in shaping labour market returns. While the other capitals did not demonstrate direct effects on labour market outcomes, they appeared to moderate or reinforce the influence of human capital, further highlighting the relational interdependence among capitals. Overall, the findings reaffirm that Graduate Capital, as an integrated and context-sensitive construct, significantly predicts graduates’ labour market outcomes, underscoring the complex and relational nature of graduate employability. This study extends the applicability of Tomlinson’s Graduate Capital Model to undergraduate vocational education in China and confirms it as a flexible and contextually sensitive framework for understanding employability across diverse cultural and educational systems. In light of global challenges facing youth employment and equity in access to opportunity, this study provides transferable insights for the higher education system navigating reform, particularly in emerging economies, to align vocational pathways with evolving labour market demands within and beyond European contexts.

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