The role of higher education in supporting graduates’ early labour market careers
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore perceptions by higher education (HE) senior professors and managers of their role in preparing graduates for entry to the labour market. By providing a theoretical and empirical overview of the functional role of HE institutions in preparing graduates for work, the paper designs an own research framework for future developments in this area.
Design/methodology/approach
The conclusions in the paper are based on a literature review and approximately 240 semi-structured interviews with HE professors and managers from six European countries and from six different study fields. The results are broadly compared with an international survey of graduates from 20, mainly European, countries.
Findings
The senior HE professors and managers see their own role in supporting graduates’ careers in a surprisingly intuitive way. There are some important differences and similarities among the study fields, although they are generally not motivated to apply an evidence-based approach to study and programme developments.
Originality/value
This paper is based on the results of a three-year survey of the European research network, and two international conferences comprising more than 100 contributions from over 30, mainly European, countries.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank all participants of the DEHEMS project for enabeling framework of the papers in this special issue.
Earlier versions of this paper were prepared within the research supported by the Slovenian Research Agency, the European DEHEMS project (see: www.dehems-project.eu), and were presented at the International Conference on “Human Capital and Employment in the European and Mediterranean Area” Bologna, 10-11 March 2011 organised by the AlmaLaurea Consortium and Bologna University (see, www.almalaurea.it/en/info/convegni/bologna2011).
The DEHEMS project has been co-funded with support from the European Commission. This communication solely reflects the views of the author and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained herein. The author would like to thank all of the DEHEMS partners for their valuable comments and assistance.
Citation
Pavlin, S. (2014), "The role of higher education in supporting graduates’ early labour market careers", International Journal of Manpower, Vol. 35 No. 4, pp. 576-590. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJM-05-2013-0105
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2014, Emerald Group Publishing Limited