way connected to the world of work. Similarly, ‘placements’ ranged from year-long industrial placements to a couple of days work-shadowing. Given that most institutions did not provide much detail about the employability development opportunities, because they were not asked to, it was difficult to be clear about how significant such activities were or whether the same thing was being ‘double-counted’: for example, placements involving work shadowing. Where statistics were provided they were raw statistics and institutions rarely gave any indication of the proportion of students involved in such activities. Definitions turned out to be much more of a problem than anticipated. Even ‘graduate’ caused confusion as it was sometimes taken to refer to ‘enrolled postgraduate students’ and sometimes as ‘ex-students who had graduated and were no longer enrolled’ and sometimes as ‘graduates (of any institution) attending employment-related short courses’. It was not surprising, therefore, that some of the employability-related terms turned out to be less than precise in practice. ‘Placement’, for example, included placements embedded in the programme of study and ‘placements’ external to the programme. Embedded placements included thin sandwich clinical or professional placements; ‘year-long’ placements as compulsory or optional parts of courses; compulsory or optional semester placements; compulsory or optional placements of a few days to 12 weeks However, the sector-wide report still highlighted some strengths and weaknesses in provision. More importantly, the audit process provided feedback to the Welsh
CARTER, R., 2001, E-mail from Carter to Lee Harvey 26/01/01 14.07 FLANDERS, S., 1995, ‘The coming of the blue-collar graduate’ Human Resources, May. HARVEY, L., 2000, ‘An Employability Performance Indicator?’, Perspectives, 4,4. pp.105–9. HARVEY, L., 2001, Report to the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales on the Work Experience and Employment Plans of Welsh Institutions. (Cardiff, HEFCW). HARVEY, L. & KNIGHT, P., 1996, Transforming Higher Education. Buckingham, Open University and Society for Research into Higher Education. HARVEY, L. & MACDONALD, M., 1993, Doing Sociology: A Practical Introduction. London, MacMillan. HARVEY, L., 1999a, Employability Audit Toolkit (Birmingham, Centre for Research into Quality). HARVEY, L., GEALL, V. AND MOON, S., 1998, Work Experience: Expanding opportunities for undergraduates (Birmingham, Centre for Research into Quality). HARVEY, L., MOON, S. & GEALL, V., with BOWER, R., 1997, Graduates’ Work: Organisational change and students’ attributes (Birmingham, Centre for Research into Quality, University of Central England in Birmingham and Association of Graduate Recruiters). HARVEY, L., PLIMMER, L., MOON, S. AND GEALL, V., 1997, Student Satisfaction Manual (Buckingham, Open University Press). HIGHER EDUCATION FUNDING COUNCIL FOR (HEFCW), 2000, ‘Work Experience and Employability Plans’, Circular W00/52HE. (Cardiff, HEFCW).
organisation (Harvey, 1999) Stage 2: Dimensions Nature of employment Time after graduation Income Discipline Range of attributes: teamworking communication risk taking, etc. Financially rewarding Interesting Delegated responsibility Stage 3: Indicators (examples) Is the graduate employed? Is the employment: linked to degree subject? Does it involve graduate skills? Does it have scope to be ‘grown’? Teamworking: experience of working in teams; experience of leading teams; ability to play different roles in different teams simultaneously, etc. E.g. delegated responsibility: control over flexible working; specify direction; make strategic decisions… State 4: Selection …. Is the graduate employed within six months of graduating? Set of key attributes, which may have a discipline-specific element Set of indicators of job satisfaction Stage 5: Instruments Survey of recent graduates employment activity Evaluation of graduates’ abilities. Satisfaction survey of graduates in work Stage 6: Decision Simple indicator of employment Complex set of indicators of graduate abilities Array of single indicators of graduate satisfaction Figure 1: A ‘magic bullet’ model of employability development Figure 2: A model of employability-development and employment