The raison d'être for universities in the EU seems to be to fulfil the needs of national economies or the short-term needs of the labour market. The contents of university studies are increasingly following the assumed needs of the labour market and various professions. Universities in Europe have become more school-like and vocational (Kivinen & Nurmi 2003). The ethos in Bologna process is that universities have to renew themselves in order to succeed for European Union in global economic struggle. In the most recent Bologna Process documents the employability has been lifted from the peripheral presence to the core presence.

Simplistic notions of employment and employability seen in these documents are clearly labour market-driven. It is easy to understand why the employability has been raised to be one of the core concepts in the Bologna Process. It is an answer to the demands from students but also from the demands of the labour market. Students want that education will somehow help their transition to the world of work. The labour market on the other hand wants graduates who are well suited for the world of work and who will “hit the ground running”. The emphasis on employability reflects the short-term benefits of the university education.

There have been many signs of growing insecurity in working life (e.g. Bauman 2000), which are reflected in employment of higher education graduates as well. All of them cannot expect anymore to transfer fluently from education to permanent full-time employment (e.g. Allen & Van der Velen 2007, Alves 2005, Schomburg & Teihcler 2006). The massification of higher education has led to a situation where growing number of graduates are facing difficulties in finding a graduate job. As Smith wrote in 1986, "a college education was once sufficient for the attainment of a good job. It is clearly no longer sufficient, but at the same time, it is all the more necessary.”

In this symposium we will explore the employment of higher education graduates from different viewpoints in several European countries: Finland, Great-Britain, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. What the employment phenomena is all about? What kind of similarities and differences there are in graduates’ placement in the world of work in different European countries? We are analysing the employment problems, the transition phases and employment outcomes by using various research methods that include quantitative as well as qualitative methods.

The symposium is a follow up of employment researchers symposiums that were held in Vienna (ECER 2009) and in Helsinki (ECER 2010). We will continue the mapping of the relationship between higher education and the world of. Different research projects will rely on different theoretical frameworks and this will enable us also to critically reflect those frameworks and also to think what is their contribution to understanding of the phenomena. Looking to the future of the professional profiles, which are being designed within the European Higher Education Area, the information generated from this symposium could benefit and improve the quality of training provided in European universities.

Employment, graduates, employability