Ebook Developing and Utilizing Employability Capitals Graduates Strategies Across Labour Markets 1St Edition Tran Le Huu Nghia Online PDF All Chapter

Developing and Utilizing Employability
Capitals Graduates Strategies across

Labour Markets 1st Edition Tran Le Huu
Nghia
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmeta.com/product/developing-and-utilizing-employability-capitals-gradua
tes-strategies-across-labour-markets-1st-edition-tran-le-huu-nghia/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...
Developing Sustainable Energy Projects in Emerging

Markets Ugboma
https://ebookmeta.com/product/developing-sustainable-energy-
projects-in-emerging-markets-ugboma/
Labour Markets Institutions and Inequality Building

Just Societies in the 21st Century 1st Edition Janine
Berg
https://ebookmeta.com/product/labour-markets-institutions-and-
inequality-building-just-societies-in-the-21st-century-1st-
edition-janine-berg/
Social Media Marketing: Strategies in Utilizing

Consumer-Generated Content 2nd Edition Emi Moriuchi
(Author)
https://ebookmeta.com/product/social-media-marketing-strategies-
in-utilizing-consumer-generated-content-2nd-edition-emi-moriuchi-
author/
House of Sticks 1st Edition Ly Tran [Tran
https://ebookmeta.com/product/house-of-sticks-1st-edition-ly-
tran-tran/
Nationalization of Gulf Labour Markets: Higher
Education and Skills Development in Industry 4.0 1st
Edition Ashraf Mishrif (Editor)
https://ebookmeta.com/product/nationalization-of-gulf-labour-
markets-higher-education-and-skills-development-in-
industry-4-0-1st-edition-ashraf-mishrif-editor/
New Approach to Cultural Heritage Profiling Discourse

Across Borders 1st Edition Le Cheng
https://ebookmeta.com/product/new-approach-to-cultural-heritage-
profiling-discourse-across-borders-1st-edition-le-cheng/
Developing Metacognitive Teaching Strategies Through

Lesson Study Cheng
https://ebookmeta.com/product/developing-metacognitive-teaching-
strategies-through-lesson-study-cheng/
Bond Markets Analysis and Strategies 10th edition Frank

J Fabozzi Francesco A Fabozzi
https://ebookmeta.com/product/bond-markets-analysis-and-
strategies-10th-edition-frank-j-fabozzi-francesco-a-fabozzi/
Migrants Refugees and Asylum Seekers Integration in

European Labour Markets A Comparative Approach on Legal
Barriers and Enablers 1st Edition Veronica Federico
https://ebookmeta.com/product/migrants-refugees-and-asylum-
seekers-integration-in-european-labour-markets-a-comparative-
approach-on-legal-barriers-and-enablers-1st-edition-veronica-
Developing and Utilizing
Employability Capitals
Graduate employability is a significant concern for most higher education institu-

tions worldwide. During the last two decades, universities have attempted to imple-
ment their employability agendas to support their students to enhance employment
outcomes. However, within today’s globalized labour markets, employability has
gone far beyond the notion of obtaining stable and permanent employment. This
book explores graduates’ experiences in developing and utilizing employability
capitals for career development and success in different labour markets.
In the chapters, the graduate contributors narrate and discuss how they nego-
tiated their employability on the transitions across jobs, occupational sectors and
labour markets. The chapters address key issues, including how employability is
understood by graduates of different disciplines, at different career stages and in
different contexts; how they develop and utilise such capitals along with strate-
gies to negotiate their employability; and what can be done to move the higher
education employability agenda forward.
The book presents international insights and perspectives into transitions
from education to work and career development across the labour markets, as
well as calls for improving the graduate employability agenda. It is an invaluable
resource for researchers and academics, university leaders, policymakers and stu-
dents who are concerned about graduate employability.
Tran Le Huu Nghia is a research fellow in work-integrated learning and gradu-

ate employability at the College of Business and Economics, Australian National
University, Australia.
Thanh Pham is a lecturer in graduate employability and higher education at the

Faculty of Education at Monash University, Australia.
Michael Tomlinson is an associate professor and a leading researcher in gradu-

ate employability at the University of Southampton, UK.
Karen Medica is a lecturer and researcher in work-integrated learning at Monash

University, Australia.
Christopher D. Thompson is Associate Dean (Education) at the Faculty of

Science, Monash University, Australia.
Routledge Research in Higher Education
Post-Recession Community College Reform

A Decade of Experimentation
Chet Jordan and Anthony G. Picciano
Building Soft Skills for Employability

Challenges and Practices in Vietnam
Tran Le Huu Nghia
Life for the Academic in the Neoliberal University

Alpesh Maisuria and Svenja Helmes
The Doctorate Experience in Europe and Beyond

Supervision, Languages, Identities
Michael Byram and Maria Stoicheva
The Thinking University Expanded

On Profanation, Play and Education
Yusef Waghid and Nuraan Davids
Developing and Utilizing Employability Capitals

Graduates’ Strategies across Labour Markets
Edited by Tran Le Huu Nghia, Thanh Pham, Michael Tomlinson,
Karen Medica and Christopher D. Thompson
The Dispositif of the University Reform

The Higher Education Policy Discourse in Poland
Helena Ostrowicka, Justyna Spychalska-Stasiak and Łukasz Stankiewicz
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/

Routledge-Research-in-Higher-Education/book-series/RRHE
Developing and Utilizing
Employability Capitals
Graduates’ Strategies across
Labour Markets
Edited by
Tran Le Huu Nghia, Thanh Pham,
Michael Tomlinson, Karen Medica
and Christopher D. Thompson
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 selection and editorial matter, Tran Le Huu Nghia, Thanh Pham,
Micheal Tomlinson, Karen Medica, Christopher D. Thompson; individual
chapters, the contributors
The right of Tran Le Huu Nghia, Thanh Pham, Micheal Tomlinson,
Karen Medica, Christopher D. Thompson to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Nghia, Tran Le Huu, editor.
Title: Developing and utilizing employability capitals: graduates’
strategies across labour markets / Tran Le Huu Nghia, Thanh Pham,
Micheal Tomlinson, Karen Medica, Christopher D. Thompson.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2020. |
Series: Routledge research in higher education | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019050539 (print) | LCCN 2019050540 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367436285 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003004660 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: College graduates—Employment. | Employability. |
Labor market. | Education, Higher—Aims and objectives.
Classification: LCC HD6277 .D485 2020 (print) | LCC HD6277 (ebook) |
DDC 331.11/445—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019050539
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019050540
ISBN: 978-0-367-43628-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-00466-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Galliard
by codeMantra
Contents
List of figures vii

List of contributors viii
Acknowledgements xii
PART 1
Background 19
21
41
66
PART 2
Graduates’ reflection on their career development journeys 81
83
vi Contents
97
116
132
148
164
182
199
219
PART 3
Graduate employability and career development:
the way ahead 235
237
256
Index 277
Figures
46
201
203
203
213
252
Contributors
Associate Professor Denise Jackson is Director of Work-Integrated Learning in

the School of Business and Law at Edith Cowan University. Denise is a lead-
ing international scholar in work-integrated learningand has also published
extensively in graduate employment and underemployment, transition from
university to the workplace, career self-management, and professional identity
development. She has received a number of research and teaching and learn-
ing awards, most recently a national Citation for Outstanding Contribution
to Student Learning, for her work on inclusive WIL design that caters to
the needs of international and regional students. She sits on the National
Board and is the State Chair WA for the Australian Collaborative Education
Network, the professional association for WIL in Australia. She is passionate
about curriculum that enhances the outcomes of less advantaged students and
has led numerous grants on enhancing graduate employability.
Hongbin Li (Lucas) graduated from Monash University and now is working at
Alphington Grammar School as a permanent secondary teacher. During his
study, he participated in a range of extra-curricular activities. This included
but was not limited to his membership with Google Education Math Chapter
in Australia, participating in supporting disability students to develop literary
and numeracy skills at Keep on Learning Program and an Education officer
at the Australia China-Youth Association at Monash University. He is also
the participant of Curiosity and Powerful Learning, a programme initiated
by the Australian Council for Educational Leaders (ACEL), and he engaged
his fourth-year professional practicum in two schools that adopt the Powerful
and Curious Learning (CPL) Instructional Model.
Dr Sophie Lindsay is currently lecturer of work-integrated learning at the Fac-
ulty of Business and Economics at Monash University. Her research interests
include employability and exploring barriers to student success. She is par-
ticipating in delivering work-integrated learning subjects at Monash Univer-
sity. Sophie has presented at multiple employability-focussed conferences and
co-authored ‘The middle years slump: addressing student-reported barriers
to academic progress’ in HERD journal. Both of these projects have been
supported by Australian Business Deans’ Council grants.
Contributors ix
Hussein Al Mamari is currently a PhD student at Monash University and a
member of the Monash Employability Research Group. His research investi-
gates the role of human agency on graduate employability. Specifically, he ex-
plores strategies used by Omani graduates to negotiate their employability and
navigate different career possibilities in their local labour market. Before his
PhD journey, he had completed his undergraduate degree in English Educa-
tion in Oman, and a master’s degree in Applied Linguistics at Monash Univer-
sity, Australia. He has worked as an English teacher in both public and private
sectors before securing a lecturer of English position in his home country.
Dr Karen Medica is from Monash University. She has engaged with research
in the area of international higher education, graduate employability, and in-
ternational scholarships. Following completion of her doctoral thesis focussed
on intercultural identity and the Australia Awards Scholarships programme,
Karen has consulted extensively on the Australia Awards programme run under
the auspices of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. She brings over
25+ years of experience working and living across cultures in the Asia-Pacific
region. She holds master’s level degrees in Public Policy and Development
Studies. Karen is a qualified Careers Counsellor and Workplace Trainer and
Assessor. She is also a member of the Monash Employability Research Group.
Dr Tran Le Huu Nghia is currently a research fellow in work-integrated learn-

ing and graduate employability at the Australian National University’s College
of Business and Economics and formerly worked as a teaching associate at
the Faculty of Education, Monash University. He has worked 16 years in
Vietnamese and Australian higher education sectors. He received the Erasmus
Mundus scholarship to complete the Master of Lifelong Learning: Policy and
Management (2007–2009) provided by Aarhus University (Denmark), Bilbao
University (Spain), and the Institute of Education (the United Kingdom).
Then as an Endeavour Postgraduate Awardee (2012–2016), he completed his
PhD, with a focus on higher education studies, at the University of Melbourne,
Australia. He has produced several research outputs, including articles in
high-impact journals such as Higher Education, Teaching and Teacher Educa-
tion, and Teaching in Higher Education. His research interests include teaching
and learning for employability, work-integrated learning, teacher education, in-
ternational education, and teaching English as a second language.
Dr Lam H Pham is a former pharmacist and pharmaceutical scientist/lecturer

who has moved from the discipline of pharmacy to the field of science edu-
cation research. Dr Pham has been working in higher education for almost
20 years. He completed two PhD degrees in Pharmacy and Science Educa-
tion at two reputational Australian universities. He has conducted intensive
research on developing curricula and pedagogy in Science Education to en-
hance students’ conceptual understanding and problem-solving skills through
representation construction. He has been applying his research to various
disciplines including science, health, pharmacy, and medical education.
x Contributors
Dr Thanh Pham is currently a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Education,
Monash University, Australia. Thanh completed her postdoctoral degrees and
postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Queensland. She has done sub-
stantial research on internationalization of higher education curricula and
enhancing interactions of students from various backgrounds and contexts.
Thanh has published extensively in cross-cultural pedagogies and is currently
heavily researching graduate employability with a focus on unpacking how
graduates develop strategies to navigate barriers in the labour markets. She
has developed collaborations with leading researchers in the field of graduate
employability to develop comparative models showing resources/capitals that
graduates need to articulate to thrive in the labour markets. Her research has
been published in various sources including journals, books, and magazines.
Thanh initiated the Alumni Experience Conference series as a platform for
alumni to share their career development experiences as well as a channel for
mentorship between graduates and current students.
Dr Jasvir Kaur Nachatar Singh is an award-winning lecturer at the Department
of Management, Sport and Tourism, La Trobe Business School. Dr Singh’s
expertise is in higher education with a particular interest on international
students matters and has received several research grants from La Trobe Uni-
versity, published numerous journal papers, and presented at higher education
conferences in Malaysia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Thailand, Hawaii, Japan,
and Australia. Dr Singh is a fellow Researcher at the Malaysian National
Higher Education Research Institute, a member of Australian Collaborative
Education Network and International Education Association of Australia as
well as an editor of the Malaysian Bulletin of Higher Education.
Melody Tang was a Chinese international graduate from Monash University where
she completed Bachelor of Commerce (Accounting and Finance) and Master of
Applied Finance. She had some Australian work experience upon graduation
and then returned to China where she engaged with education. She is now en-
rolling in a PhD programme in Education at Monash University. Her research
focusses on employment of Chinese international graduates in Australia.
Associate Professor Christopher D. Thompson is currently serving as Associ-
ate Dean (Education) at the Faculty of Science, Monash University. With a
background in Chemistry Education, he has published over 50 papers in the
fields of both science education and his native discipline of spectroscopy. At
the Faculty of Science, he has focussed on curriculum and assessment reform
across all year levels and paid particular attention to the employability of sci-
ence graduates from all disciplines. He has secured several research grants
and received excellent teaching awards in Australia. He aims to evolve and
implement novel ideas and methodologies in scientific scholarship towards
the ultimate goal of excellence in education. His combined aspiration is to
contribute to innovation in education through intelligently designed practice,
while concurrently inspiring and educating new scientists and practitioners.
Contributors xi
Erica Tippett is a skilled professional with over ten years’ experience in inter-
national higher education. She has travelled to Afghanistan, Hong Kong,
Indonesia, and Singapore for work and is passionate about intercultural un-
derstanding and diversity. A member of International Education Association
of Australia (IEAA) and Australia Indonesia Business Council (AIBC), Erica
has presented at conferences in Australia and won awards and commendations
for her fiction and non-fiction writing.
Associate Professor Michael Tomlinson is from Southampton Education
School, University of Southampton. His interests are broadly in the areas of
the higher education and the labour market and he has extensively researched
issues of graduate employability. In this field, he has pioneered a number
of significant models, including the graduate career orientations model and,
more recently, the graduate capital model. The latter has been actively incor-
porated in the University of Southampton careers and employability strategy.
He is the author of two key books which have brought together his thinking
in these fields, Education, Work and Identity (Bloomsbury, 2013) and Grad-
uate Employability in Context (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). He also serves
on the editorial boards of Journal of Education and Work, British Journal of
Sociology of Education, and Higher Education Policy.
Dr Marie Danielle Tranquille is a French teacher at Haileybury College in
Victoria and has been in the teaching profession for more than 20 years in
Australia and abroad. Passionate about teaching and about French language
and culture, she has placed her intellectual and personal interest at the centre
of her profession. She is presently undertaking a PhD in Education at Monash
University, with a focus on the role and place of French in the Victorian cur-
riculum of languages. She endeavours to engage and motivate her students
in the pursuit of their French studies and strongly believes in the importance
of including second language learning in a school curriculum. She has also
received a Fulbright Award and Rockefeller Postdoctoral Fellowship for her
research in Francophone Literature.
Anastasiya Umarova is currently researching towards Master of Education in
Digital Learning degree at Monash University, Australia. Having completed
the Bachelor of Teaching (Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University, Russian
Federation, 2008) and the Graduate Diploma in Commerce with Distinction
(Lincoln University, New Zealand, 2014), she is now exploring how digital
technologies can elevate the quality of education. Her research interests are
media education, digital learning, and instructional design.
Acknowledgements
The editorial team would like to thank all contributors of this book project for
their hard work on narrating their career development stories and long-term en-
gagement with reflection on the respective story. We appreciate all presenters and
participants of the Monash University’s Alumni Experience Conference 2018
for sharing with us their amazing career development stories. All of your stories
have contributed to informing future policy, research, and practice in graduate
employability development.
An overview of the current
policy and conceptual landscape
of graduate employability
Michael Tomlinson and Tran Le Huu Nghia
The aim of this chapter is to provide an introductory overview of the current

policy and conceptual landscape of graduate employability. A related goal is to
set the scene for the subsequent material that follows in this collection, includ-
ing the many personal narrative accounts featuring in the second part. It finally
introduces newer approaches to developing graduate employability based on
concepts of graduate capital, identity, and agency – concepts that inform much
of the analysis in the subsequent chapters. There can be little dispute over how
strongly woven into the fabric of contemporary higher education institutions
(HEIs) the employability agenda has become. More open to debate is how this
issue has been conceived, how adequately both national policy and HEIs are
approaching this agenda and how best it can be developed in order for current
students, graduates, and other key stakeholders to experience the benefits of
higher education (HE).
HEIs have changed considerably since the early stages of expansion in the
middle part of the 20th century as has their relationship has evolved in response
to the wider external environment. In many developed countries, they now op-
erate not just as nationalized systems catering for a largely domestic market, but
increasingly, as international institutes encompassing a more culturally disparate
body of students. While national policy frameworks may have been tradition-
ally designed for the purposes of a largely local student and graduate audience,
the internationalization agenda in many national HE systems means they are
required to adapt to a new climate of cultural diversity (Wihlborg & Robson,
2018). The employability agenda, which has been prominent in most national
frameworks since the start of this century, is implicated in movements towards
internationalization given the needs of both international graduates and the
global labour market served.
The starting place for exploring these issues is a consideration of the chang-
ing political landscape of HE in most national contexts, including market-based
ones such as Australia, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States of
America (USA). An overarching theme within public discourse on HE has been
the strong emphasis on economic outcomes, which has become closely associ-
ated with the principle of ‘value for money’. HE systems across the globe face
stronger fiscal challenges as mass participation becomes increasingly costly for
2 Michael Tomlinson and Tran Le Huu Nghia
both governments and individuals. In countries such as Australia and the UK
there have been concerted efforts to ensure that HEIs deliver tangible economic
outcomes, including employable graduates.
However, there remains considerable debate concerning the role which HEIs
should play in enhancing graduate’s readiness for future employment. There is
clearly much at stake for institutions given the strong emphasis within policy
discourse on the importance of HE in effectively preparing graduates for the
world of work (Jackson & Bridgstock, 2018). HEIs in many national systems
have been subject to a range of policy measures to ensure that they put in place
a range of employability-orientated measures, practices, and activities that en-
hance graduates’ future employability (Bennett, 2019). Many institutions are
now publicly evaluated in the form of national and international league tables
that demonstrate how successfully their graduates get a sound labour market
return from their studies. Therefore, the need to better understand the dynamics
of employability, what makes a graduate employable or otherwise, and how HEIs
can contribute in meaningful ways is very pertinent to future policy discourse
and frameworks in this area.
The employability discourse

One of the most marked features within national HE policy since the start of the
21st century has been the pre-occupation with enhancing graduates’ ‘employ-
ability’ (Clarke, 2008; Tomlinson, 2017b). The concept of employability is not
new or indeed remote from any discussion on how successfully individuals can
move into the labour force. In the earlier part of the 20th century the concept
was based on industrial manpower and related to the matching of people to
technical demands of a specific job so that specific job functions/assigned roles
could be undertaken (Gazier, 1999). Related concerns emerged about an em-
ployment under-class and the prevalence of increasing numbers of workers who
were unfit for the emerging industrial economy. This became associated with the
structural job-queue principle whereby employability was understood as repre-
senting a continuum with the least employable being placed at the back of the
queue until they managed to become more employable (Thurow, 1975). The
double job queuing mechanism of job-ranking and people-ranking meant that
the most advantaged groups were those whose stronger educational and labour
profiles put them ahead of lower ranked individuals in the pursuit for the most
sought-after and rewarding jobs. Traditionally, those in possession of the most
qualifications, such as university graduates were propelled to the highest ranks
of the job queue and able to access the most favourable outcomes within the
occupational structure.
The interacting forces of a less-defined graduate labour market, massification,
and the declining value of degree qualifications, all have a bearing on graduates’
position in the labour market. This, in turn, has raised the pressures on HEIs to
enhance the employability of their students so that they have a better chance of
securing a return on their qualifications. In more recent decades, employability
Policy and landscape of employability 3
has become a core focus of educational institutions’ activities. Since the 1997
Dearing report in the UK, which emphasized the importance that HE has in
improving graduates’ ‘employability skills’, researchers and policy makers have
adopted a wider range of initiatives to improve the work readiness and capa-
bility building of their graduates. Common sense definitions often prevail in
public policy debates and have tended to frame the issue as both individual and
supply-side problem. For individuals, employability depends on “the knowledge,
skills and attitudes they possess, the way they use those assets and present them
to employers and the context […] within which they seek work” (Hillage &
Pollard, 1998, p. 12). Employability has also been defined by Yorke (2006, p. 4)
as: “A set of achievements – skills, understandings and personal attributes – that
make graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their cho-
sen occupations, which benefit themselves, the workforce, the community, and
the economy”.
The ability side often places considerable attention on the individual, mainly
in terms of their capacity to draw on a broad range of abilities that meet the given
demands of an occupational area(s). It is then a case of the individuals acquiring
the right kinds of employ-abilities, presenting them to employers in a way that
meets their specific needs and then effectively deploying these in the workplace.
The key assumption here is that employability is located within, and owned by,
the individual: the individual possesses a set of employability potentials which
can be cumulatively acquired, often in the forms of skills and competences, and
which are applied directly in the pursuit of gaining and then maintaining em-
ployment. This also places considerable responsibility onto the individual to pro-
actively manage their individual employability at the point of entry and beyond:
individuals effectively make investments in their own skills and human capital
which enhance the value of their employability. It is up to them to maximize
their own labour market value towards these ends.
Another body of literature has acknowledged the greater complexities of the
employability problem than the tunnelled version adopted heavily by policy mak-
ers (see McQuaid & Lindsay, 2005). The two definitions noted above (Hillage
and Pollard, Yorke) pre-empt various questions such as: what ‘factors’ are signif-
icantly related to employment outcomes?; what are employment outcomes that
are salient and how are they to be measured?; what states of affairs, or set of
conditions might we consider as being significantly related to anticipated and/or
observed employment outcomes?
Contextual dynamics in graduate employability

There has been a gradual reframing of graduates’ employability development
away from more formal or objective understandings towards a richer under-
standing of the educational, social-economic, and work-related processes and
mechanisms which facilitate students’ successful engagements with the labour
market. The employment returns which are given primacy in definitions of suc-
cessful post-HE outcomes capture only one element in what is a more complex
social process (Holmes, 2013; McQuaid & Lindsay, 2005). In framing their
analysis of employability, McQuaid and Lindsay place emphasis on the important
interaction between wider economic factors connected to conditions of labour
market, personal circumstances in relation to more immediate contextual influ-
ences in accessing employment, and individuals’ factors such as qualifications,
skills, experiences, and attitudes. Such dimensions often interact in ways that
shape not only how individuals appraise their employability but also in terms of
objective opportunities to fulfil both their goals and potential for employment.
In a later overview, Tomlinson (2017a) outlined a three-fold conceptual frame
across macro-, meso-, and micro-levels. At a macro-level employability is influ-
enced by structural forces pertaining to the economic, political, and educational
sphere and how these come together in shaping graduates’ opportunities and
outcomes. At a meso-level, institutions associated with enhancing employability,
including HEIs and other training providers, often have to mediate these wider
shifts in terms of policies and practices at an institutional level. This also involves
a micro-level reality in terms of how employability is constructed at a personal
level. There are two main components to this. First, how graduates internalize
and make sense of the wider context and position themselves strategically around
this; and second their own interpretations of their abilities and lifecourse influ-
ences upon their attitudes and behaviours towards the labour market.
Sociological and critical literature has therefore tended to frame employability
as both contextual and relational as opposed to just an individual problem in
accessing favourable labour market returns. In reframing the problem in terms
of contextual mediators which shape employment outcomes beyond an individ-
ual’s own control, the focus shifts to the factors which can facilitate or impede
a job-seekers’ relative success in accessing employment (Forrier, Du Cuyper, &
Akkermans, 2018). There are lots of contextual determinants to employability,
not least the ability of individuals to access employment within the constraints of
available resources, local labour market opportunities and life circumstances. A
graduate may be sufficiently ‘employable’ for a given job but if they are tied to a
location of relative under-supply of jobs and have transportation challenges, fa-
milial ties, health and mobility constraints, and childcare responsibilities (to name
a few), then their ability to access suitable jobs is compromised.
It is therefore important to place discourse of employability in a larger con-
text beyond higher education. In terms of the national and institutional policy
narrative graduate employability, Bridgstock and Jackson (2019) outline three
categorical frames on which understanding of graduate employability can be
based. First is the attainment of short-term employment where the imperative
is to ensure that graduates attain and then potentially sustain employment fol-
lowing formal study. This has become closely associated with formal judgements
and ranked-measures regarding the alleged quality and value of an institution’s
offerings. Second, and related, is the importance of professional development,
formally in terms of professional accreditation and recognitions, and then more
broadly in terms of building graduates’ readiness for professional forms of
employment. Third, employability can be framed in more substantive terms of
graduates’ being able to work meaningfully and productively over the longer-
term course of their working lives. Significant here is the capacity for graduates
to make empowered and informed decisions over what are valuable employment
experiences and outcomes and which may transcend ‘objective’ markers of career
success such as status, pay, and promotion.
When seen in this light, employability is a complex interaction between
broader structural influences and individuals’ own agency in making sense and
mediating these changes. It is ultimately bound up in context and wider con-
ditions of the labour market, society, educational structures, and influences in
individuals’ own lives.
Unpacking student and graduate perceptions of the

contemporary labour market realities
When approaching future work-related and life choices, individuals have scope
to exercise some level of agency in relation to future employability, albeit within
structural parameters. There is also clearly a subjective dimension to employabil-
ity which relates to how graduates connect their educational life and job market
experience and align these to labour market goals. This also connects with the
meaning they attribute to paid employment for an individual and how much
they personally invest in this. Is this about getting a very good wage return, or
is one’s employability about feeling that you are making a valuable contribution
to the job market, doing something intrinsically valuable and socially useful?
While most of the large-scale survey data indicate that graduates achieve
better overall labour market returns and opportunities, the so-called graduate
premium, there is also evidence of a marked dispersion across the graduate pop-
ulation (Future Track, 2012; OECD, 2017). Such data patterns raise questions
as to why some graduates are better able to ‘cash in’ on their college degree and
what wider sets of mediating factors propel them (or otherwise) into advanta-
geous occupational positions. These patterns reveal less about the unconven-
tional market orientations of graduates, including those who opt to work in
voluntary sector employment, who become drawn to the ephemeral ‘gig’ econ-
omy, lifestyle-orientated ‘twilight job’, or who just actively seek work outside
traditional graduate areas. The problem of graduates’ ‘under-employment’ is
clearly a pressing issue, estimated in the UK to be around 30–40 per cent of
graduates. Some researchers have argued that there is a duality also to under-
employment which can also be seen as on objective and subjective dimensions
(Scurry & Blenkinsopp, 2011). While the former can be seen mainly in terms of
the lack of commensurate outcomes on a range of observable criteria, that is, pay,
status, opportunities for progression, the latter relate to perceptions of job qual-
ity and skills utilization, including how matched prior expectations are to their
lived realities when in actual employment. If there are structural mismatches in
supply and demand of skilled employment then more graduates may be forced
to ‘trade down’ their qualification in the search for more loosely matched job
openings. Trading down is clearly a compromise, but one which a graduate may
be prepared to make if it allows entry to a targeted sector, even though the job it-
self is not commensurate to their qualification level. They effectively start losing
their market ‘heat’ as they compete against newer cohorts of graduates, and em-
ployers perceive the delay as a negative signal of work potential and commitment.
More positive interpretations of graduates’ employment situation have indi-
cated an overriding sense of optimism in terms of how current generations of
well-qualified individuals view the world of work and its opportunities (Mercer,
2017). The challenge of career flexibility may be seen by some contemporary
graduates as potentially empowering and providing a platform for fulfilment,
although for some as a disruptive risk that prevents a stable career development
anchor. At the same time, graduates appear to be aware of the challenges within
the current labour market, including the pervading credentialism and related job
competition as well as widely publicized rises in underemployment. Much of the
current research on graduates’ labour market strategies indicates that many are
aware of the need to respond proactively to the challenge of the declining value
of academic qualification and to find ways of enhancing their positional advan-
tage to improve employment prospects (Roulin & Bangerter 2013; Thompson,
Clark, & Walker, 2013; Tomlinson, 2008).
In light of the challenges of securing meaningful, rewarding, and sustainable
forms of employment, there is a growing need for graduates to be able to actively
and strategically engage in career planning. This is clearly significant in facili-
tating effective job searching and fulfilling immediate and longer-terms career
goals, as well as wider set of career competence and scope for effective job-craft
in terms of shaping employment experiences and outcomes of their own choos-
ing (Akkermans & Tims 2017; Shury, 2017). Overall, the more self-aware and
clear graduates are on their career strengths, the more confident they may feel in
their ability to succeed in their future.
The concept of self-perceived employability is an example of how employa-
bility is subjectively mediated, involving the interaction between agency and
structure. Self-perceived employability concerns: “what it [employability] actu-
ally means to individuals in the context of their experiences, their aspirations,
and their perceptions of their ability to compete in the external labor market”
(Rothwell, Herbert, & Rothwell, 2008, p. 153). There are also related matters
such as an individual’s career orientation, what they value from employment and
what they perceive as appropriate and suitable within a given range of potential
employment opportunities and outcomes. One of the notable findings which
emerged from earlier research on students’ perceptions of employability and job
readiness were the differences between students in terms of their levels of career
mindedness and the relative centrality of future working life to their over sense
of personal life projections and planning (Tomlinson, 2007).
A more recent body of research has examined the ways in which graduates de-
velop their sense of professional identity in relation to future employment (Trede,
Macklin, & Bridges, 2012). Recent research by Tomlinson and Jackson (2019)
showed the variable ways in which students form professional identities and what
emerged from this research was the significant role that identity formation plays
in bridging HE and future employment. This is further influenced by the ex-
tent to which they have engaged in modes of pre-professional socialization that
empowers them and enable them to exercise greater levels of career control and
self-authorship. There were clear relationships between the importance students
ascribed to becoming part of a recognized professional field and positive motiva-
tions towards succeeding in a target profession. In short, the significance of per-
sonal investment and goal-direction as a component of identity capital building
works in enabling a future graduate to conceptualize a future self.
We would argue that it is more useful not to look at a graduate’s formal out-
comes, prima facie, as an end outcome in itself but as an unfolding event that en-
tails prior processes of acquisition, on-going processes of performance and activity
and future processes of development and sustainability. The idea of employability
as a social process, one which is fundamentally recursive in its nature, helps us
draw out the relationships individuals develop with the job market and how this
is played out over time beyond the point of job-entry (Holmes, 2013). Employ-
ability is clearly not a one-stop event but an on-going negotiation over time and
context. To this extent, it entails not only the graduate engaging in an initial pro-
cess of becoming, where they start forming emergent identities about the kinds
of person they wish to be in the labour market, but also a longer-term process of
re-becoming as they move through different modes of self-identity. This is a nego-
tiated process between the graduate and the wider contexts in which they move.
The last of these is important as there is unlikely to ever be a one-stop employa-
bility outcome for graduates. Instead, their employability represents a continual
process of becoming and re-becoming that requires the formation, presentation,
and enactment of work identities and their active affirmation by significant others.
Career readiness and career capitals

Given the wider challenges outlined above, HEIs have now found themselves
having to formulate ways in which to help graduates manage what has be-
come a more uncertain transition from HE to employment. The most con-
ventional institutional approach to improving graduates’ employability is
couched around the graduate skills and the enhancement of a related set of
attributes that are seen to make graduates more employable. Considerable
efforts have been made towards developing broad classifications of skills and
attributes that are then built into formal curricula planning. While such skills
convey sets of behaviours and attitudes which may be a salient feature of the
kinds of work graduates may undertake, there remain considerable ambigu-
ities concerning how these specifically shape graduate outcomes and longer-
term movement. There is also limited consensus between key stakeholders,
including different employers, academics, institutions and graduates them-
selves, about which skills matter most. Ultimately, there is unlikely to be any
straight-forward matching up of employability skills and their application and
utility in the labour market, and more so given the nature of skills being
both fluid and context-specific (for example, see Tran, 2019). It is therefore
acknowledged that the policy-endorsed formula of graduate employability =
HE qualifications + key employability skills has limitations when understanding
the complex nature of graduates’ relations to, and outcomes within a given
labour market.
A notable feature of more recent thinking on graduate employability has been
more wholistic in terms of a wider range of educational, social, cultural, and
socio-psychological resources that graduate may develop across multiple domains
in their lives (Clarke, 2018; Fugate, Kinicki, & Ashforth, 2004; Peeters et al.,
2019; Tomlinson, 2017). It has been increasingly acknowledged that transitions
and successful career progression are fundamentally a resource-based problem,
linked to notions of capitals and identity. Crucial here is the ways in which these
can be nurtured and then converted into favourable outcomes at the time of
graduate transition to the labour market. This works from an understanding of
career readiness as a crucial dimension in graduates’ immediate and longer-term
employment outcomes. Significantly, career readiness is resource-based and un-
derpinned by salient forms of resources, what can be understood as career-related
capitals that enable a job candidate to negotiate initial entry and then help de-
velop sustainable career pathways. Resources in the forms of career capitals can
not only empower an individual at the level of their perceived employability
(Rothwell et al., 2008), but also signal stronger potential to employers who may
perceive greater value in a job applicant’s profile. On this basis HEIs and their
practitioners can better facilitate graduates’ opportunities to access the kinds
of outcomes they most desire and are able to make meaningful and purposive
choices. Career readiness is defined here as the ability to manage the transition
into the labour market and make proactive and purposive decisions towards the
goals of sustaining a meaningful career pathway(s).
In framing employability around the inter-relationship between career readi-
ness and career resources, a number of key considerations come into play when
assessing how we may enhance the immediate and longer-term career prospects
of graduates. First, any analysis of employability needs to work from a more
wholistic notion of career readiness in terms of a combination of multiple and
interacting components which play a substantial part in enhancing graduates’
formal and informal relationship to the labour market. Second, career readiness
is crucially about enhancing students’ agency, scope for independent action and
sense of empowerment to navigate steps towards meaningful immediate sustain-
able career pathways. This includes their subjective employability in the broadest
sense of building identities and value-sets in order to realize valued career goals.
Third, that career readiness is able to be built on efficacious practices at an insti-
tutional level, both at the institutional level and within an organizational con-
text that help better mediate the linkages between students’ formal educational
experiences and work-related endeavours. Overall, by engaging more actively
with students’ perceptions of their own career readiness, including their existing
strength and areas for development, practitioners are in a stronger position to
work from a better understanding of students’ resource needs and how these
may be better developed.
The graduate capital developed by Tomlinson (2017) incorporates five main
forms of resources that constitute significant dimensions in how successfully
graduates are able to manage the transition from HE to work and enhance their
career readiness in ways described above. The possession of capitals is important,
as is developing ways of enhancing them, but knowing how these can assist grad-
uates’ entry to the labour market will determine how effective they are for grad-
uates’ progression. Each of these resources interacts with other resources in ways
which serve to enrich their respective value, while also potentially empowering
the graduate as they seek to manage their entry to the labour market.
Human capital is the first and most foundational form of capital valued by
graduates and utilized. It represents the hard currencies that constitute the kinds
of knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSA) that add immediate value to a student’s
employment profile on the basis of the additional cognitive value they can bring
to a workplace. Knowledge and skills are conceived in both specific and generic
ways and vary in the extent to which they may have occupational specificity and
direct application. The key is both articulating and translating the value of these
technical abilities to workplaces.
Social capital is understood to be the advantages derived from embedded sets
of social relations which enable human capital to be mobilized within a wider
social context in which it may be utilized. Social capital is effectively a socialized
form of the knowledge and skills contained within human capital as it is mobi-
lized through the social ties and networks which further enrich its value.
Cultural capital is the form of culturally valued knowledge, dispositions, and
practices and is an important dimension of employability. Its importance lies
in the ways in which graduates are able to present themselves and their profiles
to employers and is particularly salient in the recruitment stage. It is important
for graduates to foster cultural knowledge and awareness, including the rules of
engagement and modes of behaviour within target organizations.
When making connections between a graduate’s career readiness and their sense
of agency and overall employability orientation, identity capital is an important di-
mension in terms of how they approach the labour market and think about them-
selves as a future employee. A prospective employee’s identities may be channelled,
or otherwise, around specific occupational areas or more widely towards the pur-
suit of developing a wider place in the labour market. Thus, the extent to which
individual students personally invest themselves in future careers will determine
how proactive they are in their career planning and post-university strategies.
Finally, a crucial resource required by graduates in the fast-changing and un-
certain employment landscape is psychological capital based on the capacity for
individuals to respond to challenging or adverse events within the jobs market.
This can be seen as a resource as it enables people to adapt to continued chal-
lenges in their working life, also enabling graduates to be more proactive in their
career development, risk-taking, being open to new experience, and seeking fur-
ther opportunities. In effect, the development of psychological capital enables
graduates to withstand set-backs and labour market pressures and develop con-
tingency plans drawing upon higher levels of career adaptability.
Implications and ways forward
The challenge of graduate employability and career readiness carries implications
for the ways in which HEIs and individual graduates can formulate effective
strategies towards the wider goal of developing meaningful and sustainable em-
ployment in a more challenge graduate labour market. If graduates’ employabil-
ity is constituted more through resources rather than just skills, greater focus
will need to be given to finding ways of building these in ways which facilitate
such outcomes. In immediate terms, it will be important for:
• HEIs to think carefully about how they are defining key notions and how this
connects to wider goals around adding value to students’ post-HE futures;
• Graduates and HEIs to build meaningful links with the labour market (not
short-termist ones);
• Employability to be framed around identity projects and capital forma-
tions which allow graduates to enhance students’ agency and self-perceived
employability;
• The building of networks and relationship with stakeholders;
• The promotion of work-related/work-integrated learning which has tangi-
ble benefits and impacts for graduates.
More broadly, it will also be important for institutions to recognize and affirm
(adapted from Tomlinson, McCafferty, Fuge, & Wood, 2017):
• The importance of students and graduates being able to access and articu-
late formal skills and experiences and present these as meaningful and appli-
cable to target employment;
• The importance of students fully capitalizing upon the multi-faceted offer-
ings of the university experience. This includes building experiences and un-
derstanding and articulating their significance. The role of work experience
is significant and clearly cuts across all the main forms of capital;
• The need for students to be anticipative of likely transitional and early career
challenges and hurdles and to start working through strategies to negotiate
these;
• The importance of students thinking proactively about themselves as a fu-
ture employee and engaging in early career formation, either formally or
more ideationally;
• The need for students to be anticipative of likely transitional and early career
challenges and hurdles and to start working through strategies to negotiate
these;
• The need for students to begin the process of employability development
and emerging career formation fairly early into their HE.
Developing student understanding of labour market trends can be coupled with

helping them to identify career pathways that capitalize on forecasted growth
in certain sectors/industries and roles less vulnerable to automation. Helping
students to understand environmental constraints and develop barrier coping
mechanisms may also enhance resilience, deflect feelings of defeat from saturated
labour markets and declining employment prospects, and make more informed
rather than urgent, forced career decisions.
The current book

With an attempt to fill the current gap in the literature on graduate employabil-
ity, as discussed above, an Alumni Experience Conference was held at Monash
University (Australia) in September 2018. Over 60 international and domestic
graduates volunteered to share their stories about how they developed their strat-
egies to obtain and maintain their employment in their home and host countries.
The Conference enabled their perspectives on employability and career develop-
ment to be heard, including determinants and enhancers of their employment
outcomes. We have selected nine graduates from different disciplines, countries
of origin, and stages of their career to further develop their story into an aca-
demic book chapter, which is framed within the self-reflection study method.
Their stories collectively reflect the main findings of the Conference and at the
same time preserve some distinctiveness to make for a good read.
Following the current Introduction, this book is organized in three parts. The
first part (Chapters 1–3) sets the background, the theoretical framework, and the
method used to develop this book. The second part (Chapters 4–12) includes
nine self-reflection pieces that feature different career development stories of the
graduates at different stages of their career. In these chapters, the authors narrate
their career development stories and use reflection under the guidance of the lead
editor of this book to pinpoint what employability means to them, components
of employability, determinants of their employment outcomes, and key elements
contributing to their advancement in building their career in different labour
markets. They also evaluate the values of international education, and where ap-
plicable, its relevance and its contribution to their career development. They also
include recommendations for employability programmes and relevant aspects of
HE. The third part includes two chapters in which Chapter 13 provides another
layer of analysis based on the nine reflection pieces. Finally Chapter 14 discusses
the main finding of this book and implications for the employability agenda in
HE. The main content of each chapter is given below.
Part 1: Background
Chapter 1 describes the changing landscape of current and future labour markets
as well as the challenges of youth transition between education and work: decrease
in permanent jobs, increased casualization of jobs, rapid technological changes, la-
bour mobility, etc. It argues that graduates must remain employable throughout
stages of their life by actively adding to their employability capital; otherwise,
they will lose in the ever evolving global labour markets. On that premise, the
chapter continues to elaborate on major initiatives that universities are offering to
develop employability for their students. It critiques that the employability agenda
implementation is fragmented, and mostly focusses on developing work-readiness
or job-hunting practical skills within the context of local markets. It has not ad-
equately paid attention to (i) preparing graduates for the globalized knowledge
economy as well as (ii) developing competencies that foster them to grow within
the context of constant changes that the future may bring.
Chapter 2 lays the theoretical framework for the whole book. It reviews the lit-
erature on concepts of employability and its variance between groups of HE stake-
holders. Then it explores employability components essential for graduates to secure
a job and thrive in their chosen career: human capital, social capital, cultural capital,
psychological capital, and identity capital. Relating to the previous chapter, the au-
thor points out that the current employability agenda in HE mainly conceptualized
employability as possession of knowledge, skills, and attributes, and mostly focusses
on developing human capital for students while ignoring others. The chapter argues
for a new view of employability – employability as a lifelong process – bringing in
existing literature from different fields, including career development theories. The
chapter ends by calling for examining the pathways from employability to employ-
ment and career development as well as influential factors along the way.
Chapter 3 describes self-reflection and narrative inquiry as complementary re-
search tools to understand important meaning that people attach to their career
development stories. It argues that by exploring successful international gradu-
ates’ career development stories, we can understand factors that contribute to
their employment and career development. Narrative inquiry can be conducted
by narrators via a self-reflection of one’s own life story or by an independent
researcher. By narrating and reflecting on their own stories, narrators can high-
light important events and meaning attached to these events that construct their
career and life experience. Researchers can utilize self-reflection to construct a
narrative analysis that may bring out similarities and differences between cases.
By doing so, we can highlight key employability issues across contexts, impor-
tant components of employability, determinants of employment outcomes and
contributors and inhibitors of career successes.
Part 2: Graduates’ reflection on their career development journeys

To start off with the second part, Chapter 4 reports a reflection on how a gradu-
ate originally from China has built up different types of capital to realize his ca-
reer plan in Australia. Not only focussing on developing academic ability, he also
actively participated in different types of social activities, connected to people
and learned how to present himself the best. As a result, he secured a full-time
teaching position in one of the best high schools in Victoria, Australia, within
less than six months upon his graduation from the Bachelor of Education of
Monash University.
Chapter 5 features a case in which a graduate originally from China com-
pares her career development experience in the host and home country. Due to
a lack of social network and cultural understanding as well as a lack of interest
in her field of study, she struggled to look for a relevant job in Australia. How-
ever, upon returning to China, she became a competent employee who received
special interests from her superior due to the capital associated with her inter-
national education, on top of her being a Chinese born. She found the meaning
in the job she did, improved her well-being as well as constructed a professional
identity that she really desired to be. She suggests that overseas education is a
costly but valuable investment; thus, international students need to make good
use of the advantage to develop employability capital and utilize them for ca-
reer development, regardless of being in the host or the home country.
In Chapter 6, a graduate born and grew up in Australia narrates and reflects
on her diverse career pathways in different cultures. She realizes that not all cap-
itals have equal importance for each unique career journey. She interprets how
her culture, identity, and psychology (particularly adaptability) accumulated
from previous work roles helped her obtain and perform well as a scholarship
coordinator in Kabul, Afghanistan, and working up to a project manager role
in international education at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. She
projects that in this unstable work environment, graduates need a high level of
flexibility and adaptability to navigate inevitable changes in the workplace and
labour market and continue to thrive in their career.
In Chapter 7, a graduate originally from New Zealand but currently residing
in Australia raises the question of whether graduates can really succeed in their
career development if they have acquired an adequate level of all types of em-
ployability capital. Using her own story, she highlights that graduates’ ability to
identify and draw on the appropriate capital in a specific context would further
enhance employment prospects and career success. The importance of particular
capitals at different career stages and interlinking different forms of capital, also
known as participatory capital, is an important hidden enhancer of graduate em-
ployability. Generally, this chapter features how different capitals can be drawn
on to build employability across contexts.
Relatively supporting the viewpoint of the author in the previous chapter, the
author of Chapter 8 reflects on his career development in two different countries,
Vietnam and Australia, which shows that his career development was strongly fa-
cilitated by his social capital and agency – two factors helping him develop other
types of employability capital for each labour market he entered. Accordingly,
agentically networking with people in a specific context allowed him to develop
employability most relevant to that context, which, in turn, made him more em-
ployable in the eye of the beholders. Utilizing this strategy, he could also transfer
his human capital previously developed in Vietnam into the Australian labour
market. Without other types of capital developed in Australia under his agency,
this human capital could have faded.
Chapter 9 continues to highlight the role of agency in career development.
Setting the context in Oman, the author reports on his diverse career pathways
within the education sector, both public and private, in the country. The re-
flection shows that career development may be full of emotional episodes but
if graduates can handle these well, these can also be a catalyst for activating
personal agency and considering other career possibilities that may provide more
job satisfaction. While doing so, graduates need to be able to link different forms
of capital and resources to convert them into real employment outcomes. The
author posits that employability is an individual’s ability to develop certain forms
of capital, exercise personal agency in an attempt to navigate available opportu-
nities and overcome potential challenges when being engaged in labour market
realities.
Chapter 10 shifts the discussion about determinants of career development
to a new terrain, viewing it as a journey of finding identity. The author reflects
on her exploration of different pathways to build up her career and professional
identity in Russia, New Zealand, and Australia. The author argues that pro-
fessional identity is an essential part of graduates’ career development. A solid
career identity will help graduates feel more fulfilled and confident in their pro-
fessional life. She advises that universities and students should pay more atten-
tion to construct a career identity because it is the ultimate goal in one’s career
development trajectory.
A step further, in Chapter 11 the author reports that she established her pro-
fessional identity within the domain of French studies and wanted to keep it with
her throughout. In this chapter, she reports on how she navigated/circumnavi-
gated the world of work in two countries, Mauritius and Australia. With many
twists and turns to develop her career in two different educational and economic
contexts, she could still stick to her career identity. Analysing the impact of
different types of capital on her career development, she concludes that passion
was what has brought her across seas and continents to continue on her French
teaching career. Passion is an inherent element of her French teacher identity
that seemed to connect all her capital and drove her to develop relevant capital
in order to reserve that professional identity, regardless of the context where she
developed her career.
Chapter 12 features a story where a Malaysian graduate intentionally devel-
oped employability capital and navigated different opportunities to become an
academic in Australia, without following any traditional career development
routes. She concluded that employability is a lifelong process without any pre-
scribed formula to follow and it is definitely not a destination but a journey of
joy for herself. It is the responsibility of each individual, within the support of
other stakeholders such as family, schools, and the government, to define the
career goals, utilize strategies to achieve the goals, navigate new opportunities,
and thrive in their career.
Part 3: Graduate employability and career

development: the way ahead
Chapter 13 provides a narrative analysis of the career development stories featured
in Part 2, plus other stories presented at the Alumni Experience Conference. Based
on graduates’ narratives, this chapter unpacks the complexity of graduates engaging
and negotiating their employability. The chapter highlights that employability was
not characterized by a employment outcome but continued as a journey which was
shaped by a wide range of factors at macro-, meso-, and micro-levels. Differences in
expectations and intentions of stakeholders at these three levels result in the com-
plexity in employability and career development pathways. Employment outcomes
were brought about by not only education attainments, but the development and
utilization of different resources known as social capital, cultural capital, identity
capital, and psychological capital. The importance of these resources, to some ex-
tent, varied in different contexts and at different stages of the graduates’ career
journey. The chapter notes that positive employment outcomes became more likely
when graduates have developed the agentic capital – a capacity to self-analyse or
self-perceive one’s strengths and weaknesses or interlink various resources. This
capacity enhanced graduates to sell their image as an outstanding candidate in the
labour market and allow them to navigate the market realities and make necessary
adjustments to sustain their employment and thrive in their chosen career.
The final chapter summarizes key findings of this book project and discusses
implications for local education and international education in preparing stu-
dents for work and life. It discusses the roles of key stakeholders in higher edu-
cation: university leaders, lecturers, career development units, the students, the
employers and communities. It argues that the employability agenda in higher
education needs to be more agile to prepare students to cope with eventualities
instead of focussing on developing concrete skills to look for jobs upon gradua-
tion, which graduates may not know how to apply in their job-hunting process.
In summary, we believe this book will make a significant contribution to the
current literature on graduate employability because it extends the current dis-
cussion on how graduates develop and utilize their employability capital to man-
age their employment – the most recent emerging line of research in graduate
employability. It also strengthens conceptual employability models and frame-
works based on empirical evidence provided by graduates. These can inform
policies, research and practice in developing employability for students in higher
education and for individuals throughout their life.
References
Akkermans, J., & Tims, M. (2017). Crafting your career: How career competencies relate
to career success via job crafting. Applied Psychology, 66(1), 168–195.
Bennett, D. (2019). Graduate employability and higher education: Past, present and fu-
ture. HERDSA Review of Higher Education, 5, 31–61.
Bridgstock, R., & Jackson, D. (2019). Strategic institutional approaches to graduate em-
ployability: Navigating meanings, measurements and what really matters. Journal of
Higher Education Policy and Management. doi:10.1080/1360080X.2019.1646378
Clarke, M. (2008). Understanding and managing employability in changing career con-
texts. Journal of European Industrial Training, 32(4), 258–284.
Clarke, M. (2018). Re-thinking graduate employability: The role of capital, individual
attributes and context. Studies in Higher Education. Published online 23 Feb. 2017.
doi:10.1080/03075079.2017.1294152
Forrier, A., Du Cuyper, J., & Akkermans, J. (2018). The winner takes it all, the loser has
to fall: Provoking the agency perspective in employability research. Human Resource
Management Journal, 28(4), 511–523.
Fugate, M., Kinicki, A. J., & Ashforth, B. E. (2004). Employability: A psycho-social con-
struct, its dimensions and applications. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 65(1), 14–38.
Future Track. (2012). Transitions into employment, further study and other outcome: The
Future Track Stage Report 4. Warwick, England: Warwick Institute for Employment
Research.
Gazier, B. (1999). Employability: Concepts and policies, InforMisep Reports No. 67068,
Birmingham, England: European Employment Observatory.
Hillage, J., & Pollard, E. (1998). Employability: Developing a framework for policy analy-
sis, Df EE Research Briefing No. 85. London: Df EE.
Holmes, L. (2013). Competing perspectives on graduate employability: Possession, posi-
tion or process? Studies in Higher Education, 38(4), 538–554.
Jackson, D., & Bridgstock, R. (2018). Evidencing student success and graduate employ-
ability in the contemporary world-of-work: Renewing our thinking. Higher Education
Research and Development, 37(5), 984–998.
McQuaid, D., & Lindsay, L. (2005). The concept of employability. Urban Studies, 43(2),
197–219.
Mercer. (2017). Talent trends – Empowerment in a disruptive world. New York, NJ:
Mercer.
OECD. (2017) In-depth analysis of the labour market relevance and outcomes of higher
education systems. Paris, France: OECD Publishing.
Peeters, E., Nelissen, J., Nele De Cuyper, N., Forrier, A., Verbruggen, M., & De Witte,
H. (2019). Employability capital: A conceptual framework tested through expert anal-
ysis. Journal of Career Development, 46(2), 79–93.
Rothwell, A., Herbert, I., & Rothwell, F. (2008). Self-perceived employability: Construc-
tion and initial validation of a scale for university students. Journal of Vocational Be-
havior, 73(1), 1–12.
Roulin, N., & Bangerter, A. (2013). Students’ use of extra-curricular activities for po-
sitional advantage in competitive job markets. Journal of Education and Work, 26(1),
21–47.
Scurry, T., & Blenkinsopp, J. (2011). Under-employment among recent graduates: A re-
view of the literature. Personnel Review, 40(5), 643–659.
Shury, J. (2017). Planning for success: Graduates’ career planning and its effect on gradu-
ate outcomes. London: Department for Education.
Thompson, L., Clark, G., & Walker, M. (2013). ‘It’s just like an extra string to your bow’:
Exploring higher education students’ perceptions and experiences of extracurricular
activity and employability. Active Learning in Higher Education, 14(2), 135–147.
Thurow, L. (1975). Generating inequality. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Tomlinson, M. (2007). Graduate employability and student attitudes and orientations to
the labour market. Journal of Education and Work, 20(4), 285–304.
Tomlinson, M. (2008). ‘The degree is not enough’: Students’ perceptions of the role of
higher education credentials for graduate work and employability. British Journal of
Sociology of Education, 29(1), 49–61.
Tomlinson, M. (2017a). Forms of graduate capital and their relationship to graduate em-
ployability. Education + Training, 59(4), 438–452.
Tomlinson, M. (2017b). Graduate employability: Introducing a complex, contested
and multi-facted policy and research field. In M. Tomlinson & L. Holmes (Eds.),
Graduate employability in context: Theory, research and debate (pp. 1–40). Basing-
stoke, England: Palgrave.
Tomlinson, M., & Jackson, D. (2019). Professional identity formation in higher edu-
cation students. Studies in Higher Education. doi:10.1080/03075079.2019.1659763
Tomlinson, M., McCafferty, H., Fuge, H., & Wood K. (2017). Resources and readiness:
The graduate capital as a new approach to graduate employability. Journal of National
Institute for Career Education and Counselling, 38(1), 28–35.
Tran, L. H. N. (2019). Building soft skills for employability: Challenges and practices in
Vietnam. London: Routledge.
Trede, F., Macklin, R., & Bridges, D. (2012). Professional identity development: A review
of the higher education literature. Studies in Higher Education, 37(3), 365–384.
Yorke, M. (2006). Employability in higher education: What it is, what it’s not. York, England:
Higher Education Academy.
Wihlborg, M., & Robson, S. (2018). Internationalisation of higher education: Drivers,
rationalies, priorities, values and impacts. European Journal of Higher Education, 8(1),
8–18.
Part 1
Background
1 The need to develop
graduate employability
for a globalized world
Thanh Pham and Denise Jackson
Introduction
The last decades have experienced significant changes in labour markets world-
wide due to the impact of globalization, advancement of technology, imbalanced
economic developments in different regions, restructuring of industries and
businesses, changes in governments’ migration polices, and constant labour
movements (Acemoglu & Restrepo, 2018; Barley, Bechky, & Milliken, 2017;
Berg, 2015; N. Lee & Clarke, 2019; Stijepic, 2017). On the one hand, these
changes offer graduates a wider range of employment options with greater free-
dom of choice, both within and across organizations, occupational sectors, and
countries (e.g. see N. Lee & Clarke, 2019). These changes, on the other hand,
mean that graduates will face a greater level of job insecurity, underemployment,
and economic uncertainty (Dean & Wilson, 2009; The Statistics Portal, 2018;
Yang, 2018). Hence, graduates have to be more independent, enterprising and
mobile as well as able to manage their career trajectories (Bridgstock, 2009;
Jackson & Wilton, 2017).
These changes have also required many governments and higher education
(HE) sectors to pay more attention to better preparing their students for the
future (Department of Education Science and Training, 2002, 2019; Kinash,
Crane, Judd, & Knight, 2016; Shattock, 2001). Moving beyond the traditional
purpose of developing an elite workforce, HE has become more engaged with
facilitating the development of students’ professional skills – also known as grad-
uate attributes, generic skills, or ‘soft’ skills – required by industries and em-
ployers. After more than 20 years, employability development initiatives cluster
around a skills-based and work-integrated learning (WIL) approach, mostly tar-
geted to local labour markets (Morrison, 2014; Tholen, 2015). Such initiatives
have not adequately paid attention to preparing graduates for the globalized
world as well as developing competencies that foster them to advance as they
move through their career development trajectory and build resilience to cope
with future changes.
Setting the background for this book, the current chapter depicts current
socio-economic changes and initiatives that higher education has navigated to
prepare students for today’s globalized labour markets. We discuss limitations of
22 Thanh Pham and Denise Jackson
the current dominant skills-based approach to employability development that
seems to have insufficiently prepared students for career development in different
contexts in a global knowledge economy. The chapter ends by calling for a better
approach to employability development to effectively help graduates transition
to the labour market, obtain suitable graduate positions, navigate their career
development, and thrive within their chosen career path.
Characteristics of the 21st-century labour market

The early years of the 21st century has witnessed the boom of knowledge, growth
of technology, unification of production and finance, free flow of labour across
countries, and much more. All of them have contributed to creating significant
changes and uncertainties in the labour markets. The following are three major
characteristics of the 21st-century labour market.
A knowledge-based economy
The first significant change is the shift from the industrial to the knowledge-based
economy. This has been augmented by the liberalization of trade and finance, the
emergence of new types of firms (e.g. lean production, internally flexible firm) and
the predomination of the service industry, technology and innovation (Leoni, 2012;
Tomlinson, 2013). At the workplace, technologies – especially digital ones – have
enhanced work productivity, replaced many jobs that demand human labour by
machines and robots and simultaneously created new jobs (N. Lee & Clarke, 2019).
New knowledge is doubled almost every two years, giving human beings an abun-
dance of opportunities to explore new horizons that they have never known before
(Dehkord, Samimi, Alivand, & Sani, 2017). These changes have also transformed
linear and organizational-based careers into boundaryless careers characterized by
greater flexible, adaptive, non-permanent and uncertain employment arrangements
(Clarke, 2018; Tomlinson, 2013).
To respond positively to changing economic trends, industry demands their
prospective employees to possess evolving sets of professional skills (Carnevale &
Smith, 2013; Pham, Saito, Bao, & Chowdhury, 2018), also known as ‘soft’ skills
or generic and transferable skills. Employers have highly appreciated these skills,
considering them an important indicator of graduate employability linked to
their hiring decisions (Nickson, Warhurst, Commander, Hurrell, & Cullen,
2012; Robles, 2012; Succi & Canovi, 2019). Similarly, graduates who are look-
ing for jobs also believed that their employability skills are crucial for them
to obtain an employment opportunity, rather than their qualification alone
(Brown, Hesketh, & Wiliams, 2003). In fact, rapid technology changes in the
knowledge economy seem to devalue formal education and require employees
to be able to learn on the job in order to catch up with new knowledge and
skills so that they can undertake work duties effectively. For example, the 2018
Graduate Outcomes Survey in Australia (The Social Research Centre, 2019)
reported only 57.4 per cent full-time employees felt that their qualification was
Need to develop graduate employability 23
‘very important’ or ‘important’ for their current employment while for post-
graduate coursework graduates, this figure was only 46.5 per cent. Graduates in
part-time work positions even rated their qualification as less important. Overall,
less than one-half of all employed graduates reported their qualification as a sig-
nificant factor related to their employment outcomes.
Labour mobility
The 21st-century workplace is becoming more diverse due to labour mobility.
Workforce mobility is a phenomenon first catalysed by globalization, economic
cooperation agreements (e.g. European Union, North American Free Trade
Agreement, and Agreement in Trades in Services). Under such agreement, a
graduate could travel from one country to another to work and live. For exam-
ple, in 2017, there were 17 million people moving across countries in the EU,
among which 12.4 million were within the working age between 20 and 64
compared to 11.8 million in 2016 (Fries-Tersch, Tugran, Markowska, & Jones,
2018). Such global labour mobility has been exacerbated by the ‘war for talent’
between healthy economies like Australia, England, Canada, and America due
to a shortage of skilled workers (Chiswick & Hatton, 2003). Advanced countries
have supported migration by sponsoring skilled workers and granting post-study
work rights to international graduates to remain in the labour market for cer-
tain periods. Take Canada as an example, in 2012, the Canadian government
decided to increase the number of international student enrolments to 450,000
by 2022 in an attempt to make Canada a hub for top talent, using favourable
post-study migration policies (Hawthorne & To, 2014). By 2012, approximately
3,983 international graduates had successfully obtained Canadian permanent
residency as skilled migrants, with more expected to take advantage of this pol-
icy trend (Hawthorne & To, 2014).
At the same time, economic saturation in advanced countries and rapid eco-
nomic development in developing countries, particularly in Asia, have triggered
“reverse mobility” which denotes the flow of labour from developed to develop-
ing countries. In 2017, unemployment rates in Australia, the UK, and the US
were 5.4 per cent, 4.2 per cent, and 4.4 per cent, respectively, whereas this figure
was only 2.1 per cent in Vietnam, 1.0 per cent in Thailand, and 0.8 per cent in
Myanmar (GradStats, 2018; Men, 2018). Therefore, with their qualifications,
knowledge, and skills obtained from a developed country, graduates from devel-
oping economies could more easily secure jobs at home.
Reverse mobility is an inherent trend in international education. Termed by
J. J. Lee and Kim (2010), it refers to students coming out of their home coun-
tries to pursue international education in a host country, and then return to
their home countries. It is observed that there has been an increase in the
number of returnees to rapidly developing economies due to job opportunities
and incentives launched by local governments to attract this source of skilled
workforce for the development of local economy, society, and innovations (Ho,
Seet, & Jones, 2016). In addition, scholarships awarded to developing countries
often mandate graduates to return home to contribute to nation building
(Medica, 2016; Tran, 2019b). For example, around 50 per cent of international
students in Australia have returned to their home country (Lawrence, 2013).
Moreover, relatively cheap labour costs in Asian labour markets have led many
Western investors to establish businesses, which, in turn, have expanded fur-
ther employment opportunities for Asian returnee graduates (Donaubauer &
Dreger, 2018).
‘Reverse mobility’ is also happening to Western international graduates. Until
the mid-1990s, the destinations of choice were English-speaking countries, such
as the US, the UK, and Australia. In recent years, Western graduates have found
employment in China, Singapore, and Malaysia (Sharman, 2014). Australia and
the UK have supported their students in sourcing opportunities for study and
work abroad, through policies and other activities. For example, the Australian
Government’s New Colombo Plan has enabled many of its students to undertake
work placements and internships in the Indo-Pacific region. Similarly, between
2008 and 2011, there was a 27 per cent rise in the number of British students
moving overseas (mostly to Asian countries) for job opportunities.
Many labour markets now also experience labour mobility between occupa-
tional sectors, within or between countries. The Australian HR Institute re-
ported an increasing organizational turnover rate from 13 per cent in 2012 to
18 per cent in 2018, with smaller organizations reporting more staff turnover
than larger ones (Institute, 2019). In Japan, 36.1 per cent male and 37.9 per
cent female graduates reported a tendency to leave their current jobs (Kosugi,
2017). Job turnover is caused by a range of factors including personal factors
(e.g. age, location, family movement, financial burdens, vocational interests, and
expected occupational self-efficacy) and external factors (e.g. company manage-
ment systems, dynamic head hunting) (Volodina & Nagy, 2016). Labour market
factors such as restructuring, delayering and downsizing, casualization, lack of
job security, and harsh working conditions are also found to contribute to career
mobility (Kosugi, 2017), as further elaborated below.
New work arrangements and patterns

The 21st-century labour markets have seen many new work arrangements and
patterns organized to fit better with constant change in skills demands at work
and personal demand in career development. It is observed that while perma-
nent jobs are diminishing, precarious jobs are on the rise (Lewchuk, 2017;
Maciejewska, Mrozowicki, & Piasna, 2016). For example, between 1976 and
2015, the percentage of full-time employees in Australia dropped by 11.7 per
cent from 85.4 per cent to 73.7 per cent (Lewchuk, 2017). In the same period,
that figure in Canada was 5.6 per cent, with 87.5 cent full-time employees in
1976 and 81.9 per cent, by 2015 (Lewchuk, 2017). In Germany, in ten years
(2000–2010), the number of full-time employees reduced by approximately
2.55 million, whereas the number of part-time employees increased by 1.83
million (Lehndorff, 2016).
In addition, instead of working for an organization, more people are becom-
ing self-employed. A recent report of the US Bureau of Statistics revealed that
in 2015 there were 15 million people on a self-employment position, equivalent
to 10.1 per cent of all workers in the US (Hipple & Hammond, 2016). The re-
port also noted that within the entrepreneur culture of the US, the percentage of
self-employed people seemed to slightly decrease, from 12.1 per cent in 1994 to
10.1 per cent in 2015. Older people are more likely to be in self-employment posi-
tions than younger people, this report showed. In Europe, there are about 14 per
cent of self-employed workers, of which Greece is on top with 30.4 per cent, fol-
lowed by Italy with 21.9 per cent. Nordic countries at the bottom among the 24
European countries involved in the study: Finland 12.3 per cent, Sweden 9.0 per
cent, Denmark 8.3 per cent, and Norway 6.6 per cent (Hatfield, 2015). Generally,
countries with more active labour market policies often have less informal work
arrangements than their counterparts (Packard, Koettl, & Montenegro, 2012).
However, people opt for self-employment also related to their individual person-
alities, family circumstances, education and experience, and financial resources
(Simoes, Crespo, & Moreira, 2016).
Alongside with self-employment, it is also observed that in many countries, en-
trepreneurship has increasingly contributed to economic development and reduced
unemployment (Ács, Audretsch, Strom, & Strom, 2009; Edoho, 2016). Various
governments have launched policies that encourage entrepreneurship, such as
loans for start-ups, especially in the small business sector (Zhang & Hamilton,
2010). Noticeably, entrepreneurship has also become a popular career pathway
among international returnees and immigrants because they have international
knowledge, skills, and social connections (Saxenian, 2007). In China and India,
the rise of high-tech industries and strong business growth has allowed returnees
to build start-ups based on their international experience, technological exper-
tise, and business practices accumulated abroad (Kenney, Breznitz, & Murphree,
2013). Li, Zhang, Li, Zhou, and Zhang (2012) found that returnee entrepreneurs
played an important role in initiating innovations, expanding exports, and increas-
ing financial performance. Likewise, immigrants in the US are over-represented
among founders of high-tech companies, and biotech firms and contribute a lot
into the economy (Fairlie & Lofstrom, 2015).
In short, the knowledge-based economies instilled by knowledge and tech-
nological development, global and local labour mobility, flexible work arrange-
ments and patterns are strongly influencing 21st-century labour markets. In
those markets, uncertainties are as prevalent as opportunities; diversity at work is
as important as personal qualities; global perspectives are in harmony with per-
sonal perception and needs. Thus, career development trajectories have become
more complex and requiring of individual effort to manage and thrive in their
chosen careers. Higher education, as the final level of formal education, needs to
equip students with competencies to successfully transition between education
to work, to navigate the world of work and identify employment opportunities
relevant to their expertise and needs, and also to demonstrate their capabilities
to prospective employers.
The changing landscape of higher education
Higher education has established itself as a sector with distinct socio-cultural
practices. Throughout its course of development, despite shifting in its focus, the
sector has shown that it has three major missions: teaching, research, and com-
munity engagement. It seems that the three missions have been re-organized to
meet several pressures exposed over the last 20 years or so.
Among the three missions of the university, the teaching mission was possi-
bly the oldest mission, which could be traced back to the medieval time (Scott,
2006). Under the Humboldtian model in the 19th century, research received
more attention to cater for the need of building knowledge and to improve the
quality of human life (Scott, 2006). In recent years, community engagement
(Sánchez-Barrioluengo, 2014), described as simply the market-oriented teaching
and knowledge transfer activities (Sánchez-Barrioluengo, 2014), has emerged
from the expectation that in a knowledge-based society, HE institutions should
be the driver of innovation and contribute to society by generating income
through research, research consultancy, training of students, and business col-
laboration with communities (Etzkowitz, 2004; Organisation for Economic
Cooperation Development, 2007). Thus, the community engagement mission
is embedded into the teaching-learning and research mission of HE institutions.
In the past, HE teaching and research could influence society through the
value of knowledge and related products it generated. However, in modern time,
these activities are oriented to addressing societal needs or issues to consolidate
social well-being and development (Power & Malmberg, 2008). This has made
the university-society interaction more bi-directional (Roper & Hirth, 2005).
This also suggests that in the current era of globalization, interactions between
a university with surrounding communities may condition changes in the prac-
tices of that university. Indeed, in recent years, interacting with different stake-
holder groups, HE around the world has been under different types of pressure
that require these institutions to adjust their operational activities to fit better
into societal needs. In the sections that follow, the authors will present how the
landscape of HE has changed due to such various pressures.
Economic pressure
As depicted earlier, changes in the labour market are probably the strongest
driver for change in the operation of HE. There has been an increase in the
shift from a manufacturing to a service economy in recent decades. Obviously,
any service would consider clients’ needs and satisfaction as top priorities; thus,
alongside with disciplinary expertise, employee’s personal attributes such as
communication skills, adaptability, personal presentation, etc., also become
prominent in any service transaction. Thus, these skills have been embedded and
taught as an integral part of the HE curriculum, something that was not done in
the past (Pitman & Broomhall, 2009; L. H. N. Tran, 2017c). In the same vein,
the advent of the knowledge economy has required workers to possess not only
disciplinary knowledge but also a variety of soft skills and the ability to combine
them to effectively multi-task at work. It has also demanded employees to be
able to self-direct their learning at the workplace in order to catch up with new
technologies and knowledge that can improve productivity and innovation. More
critically, global labour markets are becoming complex and constantly changing.
Permanent employment contracts are now reducing in number, and there has
been a rise in casual or short-term employment contracts. This means that grad-
uates will have to move across different jobs, and possibly work sectors before
they can secure a full-time job (Hager & Holland, 2006). Therefore, students
should be equipped with skills and attributes to help them manage transitions
between education to work and from work to subsequent work and with the
skills to cope with potential periods of unemployment or underemployment.
Social pressure
There is increasing emphasis on the role of HE in producing active citizenship
and capacity for building community (Biesta, 2007; McCowan, 2012). More
focus has been paid to the “third mission” of the university, whereby it can
directly contribute to community development via knowledge and technology
transfer (Sánchez-Barrioluengo, 2014). Engaging with surrounding communi-
ties can boost research and teaching collaboration. Universities can help to pro-
duce graduates whose competencies can meet social needs. University graduates
will later become active citizens with an ability to participate in social move-
ments related to their interests to build a more transparent and just society. In
this way and given increased labour mobility, it is expected that the university
shall prepare students for building their career within both local and global mar-
kets. Without preparing students for a changing global labour market, students
are likely to be disadvantaged when foreign employers come to invest, or when
opportunities to develop an international career arise.
Cultural pressure
Modern HE institutions have experienced significant cultural changes in their
operations and relationships with stakeholders. In the past, HE was for elites with
the purpose of training manpower for civic missions (Biesta, 2007; McCowan,
2012). Now despite the existence of elite HE institutions, they are observed to
cater to the masses and be more universal. This has led to HE institutes becom-
ing more commercial in many countries in terms of their provision of interna-
tional education (Hayhoe, Li, Lin, & Zha, 2012; Mok & Jiang, 2018; Trow,
2010). Entailing this expansion, the university-student relationship has lately
shifted to become that between a service provider and a customer. Still, in some
aspects of university life such as library and career guidance services, students
are increasingly treated as customers, leading to some degree of change in HE
operations. Students themselves are increasingly expecting the university to treat
them as customers and simultaneously prepare them for employment, especially
international students (James, Krause, & Jennings, 2010; L. H. N. Tran, 2019b).
This could be because the university degree alone no longer guarantees a job,
especially in a time of over-supply of university graduates. Meeting employers’
demands has seemingly become a new cultural aspect in the operation of univer-
sity teaching nowadays with Universities now more proactive in their industry
outreach. No longer staying in the ‘ivory tower’, numerous universities have en-
gaged with industries for teaching and research projects. For example, employers
are involved in the development of curriculum, delivering of subjects, as well as
supervising and assessing interns (Raddon & Sung, 2006; L. H. N. Tran, 2018).
Understandably, this is because the university must advance the employability of
its graduates.
Political pressure
Recent years have witnessed a move from focussing on inputs to focussing on
the process and outcomes in delivering university educational programmes
(Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, 2013). With an increase
in the number of students, institutions, programmes, courses, and mode of
delivery, HE institutions are more strictly required to be accountable for the
quality and standards of their educational programmes (Bendermacher, oude
Egbrink, Wolfhagen, & Dolmans, 2017; Hsu, 2019). Higher education institu-
tions are expected to clearly articulate, deliver, and assess graduate outcomes as
part of the quality assurance and accountability deliverable (Tertiary Education
Quality and Standards Agency, 2013). In addition, accountability and quality
assurance are linked to public funding mechanisms, which are significant in a
time of scarce resources (Frølich, 2011; Hsu, 2019). It is certain that some HE
institutions can still operate well, based on revenue from research contracts,
donations from social organizations and alumni, technological and knowledge
transfer, etc., but losing government financial support can disadvantage their
operations. Finally, HE institutions are driven by research reputation, articu-
lated by university ranking systems. These systems rank HE institutions based
on not only research performance, but also the quality of teaching via the proxy
of employers’ feedback. Such systems have vigorously changed research, teach-
ing, and other activities in higher education, regardless of critiques (Soh, 2017;
Vernon, Balas, & Momani, 2018).
All of the pressures above have strongly changed the landscape of HE sec-
tors around the world. They have required HE institutions to re-think the pur-
pose of HE, design initiatives, and execute initiatives to address the demands of
different stakeholder groups. One of their responses is graduate employability
programmes which aim to help produce graduates who can meet employers’
demands for work skills and graduates that can thrive in their career.
The next section will review current employability development initiatives
in HE and assess their relative offerings and limitations. This analysis will in-
form a more comprehensive understanding of effective graduate employability
development.
Employability programmes: the response of
higher education
In response to changes in the labour markets and demands of different groups
of stakeholders, HE sectors have launched several initiatives to develop employ-
ability for students (S. Barrie, Hughes, & Smith, 2009; Kinash et al., 2016;
L. H. N. Tran, 2019a). Although there is fragmentation in implementing these
employability-related initiatives, they can be classified into two main trends: a
skills-based approach and a work-integrated learning (WIL) approach.
The skills-based approach

Champions of the skills agenda believe that equipping students with employabil-
ity skills beyond their formal academic learning enables graduates to cope with
future challenges of graduate-level work. Universities have, therefore, identified
and embedded employability skills expected by industry into the curriculum,
co-curriculum, and extra-curriculum (S. Barrie et al., 2009; L. H. N. Tran,
2017a, 2017c). Although there has not been a consensus on the definition,
graduate attributes are often referred to as ‘soft skills’, ‘graduate competencies’,
‘work-ready skills’, ‘generic skills’, and ‘transferable skills’ (S. C. Barrie, 2007;
Tomlinson, 2012; Williams, Dodd, Steele, & Randall, 2016). Most common
graduate attributes that have been strongly recommended and embedded in
teaching and learning programmes include communication, teamwork, organ-
izational, problem-solving, self-management, and critical thinking (Pitman &
Broomhall, 2009; Saito & Pham, 2018; Pham & Saito, 2019).
In the last two decades, the skills agenda has been supported by many coun-
tries. It was the major objective of European higher education reforms post
the Bologna Process in 1999 (Engelberg & Limbach-Reich, 2012). Australia,
New Zealand, and Canada have all showed their support by developing
institution-based and government skills frameworks (Department of Education
Science and Training, 2002; Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency,
2013). In Australia, for example, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards
Agency (TEQSA) explicitly required universities to embed graduate attributes
in curriculum and show evidence of industry engagement in course develop-
ment (Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, 2013). TEQSA man-
dates that Australian higher education providers can maintain their accreditation
only if they comply with TEQSA’s Higher Education Standards Framework,
which explicitly includes teaching and assessing graduates. Asian countries have
become increasingly aware of the need to enhance their students’ professional
skills due to perceived gaps in graduate capabilities and those required in the
workplace. For example, since 2010, the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and
Training (MOET) has formally required its universities to embed soft skills into
the curriculum and impart these skills to students in order to meet employers’
needs and to fight against graduate under- or unemployment (MOET, 2010).
Following the MOET’s policy, Vietnamese universities have taught and assessed
a number of important soft skills such as communication, presentation, team-
work and problem-solving skills, mostly via skills subjects embedded in each cur-
riculum (L. H. N. Tran, 2017b, 2017c), or via skills training sessions organized
as extra-curricular activities (L. H. N. Tran, 2017a).
Work-integrated learning (WIL)

WIL is an “umbrella term for a range of approaches and strategies that integrate
theory with the practice of work within a purposefully designed curriculum”
(Patrick et al., 2008, p. iv). Work-integrated learning infuses industry and com-
munity engagement within the curriculum (Jackson, 2018), therefore integrating
the two fundamental dimensions of theory and practice modes of learning, and
explicit and tacit forms of knowledge (Jackson, 2018; Pham et al., 2018). WIL
comprises workplace-based activities such as internships, placements, practicums,
and fieldwork (Universities Australia, 2019); it also involves activities offered on
campus, both physically, remotely or virtually, such as industry-based projects,
consulting, simulations, and virtual internships. WIL may also encompass ser-
vice learning, where students work on community-focussed tasks and projects.
In recent years, overseas WIL under forms of a semester exchange or short-term
employment or visit has become popular (Crossman & Clarke, 2010).
Work-integrated learning has been adopted widely in HE because of its pos-
itive contribution to graduates’ employment and career development prospects.
It affords students opportunities to apply what they have learned into solving
real-world problems through which they can further construct knowledge and
skills, to connect them with professionals, to identify a suitable career pathway
and even change their learning behaviours (Ferns, Smith, & Russell, 2014; L.
H. N. Tran & Nguyen, 2018). Overseas WIL has also yielded positive impacts
on students’ employability, regardless of whether students are from developed
or developing countries (Crossman & Clarke, 2010; Niser, 2010). Exposure to
other countries’ social, cultural, economic, and academic contexts can enhance
students’ cultural sensitivity and adaptability, which gives students an advantage
to compete in international labour markets (Crossman & Clarke, 2010). In short,
WIL programmes allow students to develop both disciplinary knowledge and
skills as well as professional skills (Cate Gribble, 2014; Jackson, 2015; L. H. N.
Tran & Nguyen, 2018) and directly enhance their chance to gain graduate em-
ployment (Gault, Leach, & Duey, 2010; Nunley, Pugh, Romero, & Seals Jr, 2016)
Limitations of the employability related initiatives
Limitations of the skills-based approach to developing

graduate employability
Although the skills-based approach to developing graduate employability has
been predominant in HE for the last decade, there are limitations regarding
HE’s contribution to preparing graduates for the globalized labour markets. The
first limitation is that there are various conceptualizations of employability skills
among HE stakeholders who differ in terms of their background, expertise, and
employability agenda (Jackson, 2009). This leads to confusion among universi-
ties, academics, and students about how and to what extent each employability
skill should be embedded (S. Barrie et al., 2009; L. H. N. Tran, 2017c). Con-
sequently, although HE institutions have prioritized teaching a range of profes-
sional skills, there is fragmentation in implementing these skills and employers
continue to complain about graduates’ attainment of these skills.
Second, the skills-based approach can be impractical in developing graduate em-
ployability skills. When taught as one-off skills subjects, students may not develop
these skills at an applied level because most professional or soft skills need a long pe-
riod of time to develop (L. H. N. Tran, 2019a). When included as co-curriculum,
a disconnect between the skills co-curriculum and the main curriculum has been
observed (S. Barrie et al., 2009). When imparted via extra-curricular activities,
students would disregard or prioritize curriculum-based activities (L. H. N. Tran,
2017a). All of these teaching practices may impart knowledge related to employa-
bility skills, but they do not necessarily help students to see a link between these
skills and their future profession (Bridgstock, 2019; Jackson, 2016). Moreover,
the mastery of these skills is also far from creating a sense of being a professional
in the field (Holmes, 2013).
Third, the skills-based approach assumes that graduates can automatically
transfer these acquired skills and knowledge into a workplace context. Yet, trans-
ferring is complex and requires explicit consideration in HE curriculum design
(Jackson & Hancock, 2010). Helyer (2011) also found that only communication
skills, leadership and management, negotiation skills, IT, and innovation are
useful in different work environments and appropriate to current and future
skills development. As such, although a wide range of professional skills has
been taught, only a small number could support graduates when they enter a
job. Therefore, the skills-based approach will not be effective without students’
ability to transfer skills between different work contexts.
Fourth, the skills-based approach to developing employability appears to fail
to help graduates to cope with career transition and change. Bridgstock (2009)
and Jackson and Wilton (2017), for example, found that career self-management
skills (such as career insight, self-confidence, and self-perceived employability,
and the ability to set future goals and proactively navigating future pathways)
are impactful and salient in the longer-term management of graduates’ careers.
However, those skills are often disregarded in current HE curriculum. Likewise,
concerning career change, Dlouhy and Biemann (2018) explained that the same
set of skills could be used when individuals are mobile within an occupational
sector. However, moving across occupational sectors would require new skills,
routines, and further training, be it formal or informal, because prior knowl-
edge, skills, and work experience are less relevant in a new occupation (Dlouhy &
Biemann, 2018; Feldman & Ng, 2007; Nawakitphaitoon, 2014). Given the ris-
ing trends in occupational mobility and entrepreneurship, many graduates will
therefore need to receive training from employers or be able to self-teach new
knowledge and skills to undertake new responsibilities. Within the skills-based
approach it is impossible for HE to embed a long list of skills necessary for their
students into an already crowded curricula.
Finally, the skills-based approach to developing employability does not serve
well for graduates to work in different countries. Morrison (2014) and Tholen
(2015) highlighted that the process of matching expert knowledge with occupa-
tional roles does not take place in a social vacuum because all skills and attributes
at the workplace are heavily nuanced, classed, and gendered. This is more ob-
vious in the case of international graduates and migrants with many employers
reported to hold a biased ‘perception of fit’ in the case of international graduates
(Almeida, Fernando, Hannif, & Dharmage, 2015). For instance, recruiters of-
ten hold negative attitudes towards migrants because of non-Anglicized names,
heavy accents, and non-recognized their qualifications and skills (Almeida et al.,
2015; Madziva, McGrath, & Thondhlana, 2014). Pham and Saito (2019) dis-
covered that international returnees failed to utilize their professional skills
if they did not understand their home or third country’s local context. They
used Australia’s interpretation of ‘adaptation’ and ‘flexibility’ while working
within their team, but in Vietnam employees are expected to flexibly adapt and
optimize their working styles based on their employers’ orders, regardless of
their expertise. Thus, in the context of global mobility of the 21st century, this
skills-based education is not enough to enable graduates to develop their career
internationally.
Limitations of WIL
While internship and placement experiences certainly benefit graduates in vari-
ous ways, there are documented limitations. First, the majority of WIL experi-
ences are short, mostly less than three months, which can limit the development
of skills for interns. As noted above, skills need time to develop (L. H. N. Tran,
2019a), hence providing WIL experience can only result in basic level skills, pro-
vided that students fully engage with the WIL opportunity.
Second, there has been a lack of WIL opportunities and not all students have
equal access to WIL based on academic and socio-economic status (Patrick et
al., 2008). Local employers are often reported to favour domestic students for
workplace-based WIL opportunities, which are problematic, given the strong de-
mand among international students to gain relevant work experience (Catriona
Gribble, Blackmore, & Rahimi, 2015). Students in regional universities would
be disadvantaged in terms of WIL experience as there are less enterprises close
to their home in which to undertake internships. Cost is another problem that
prevents students from low socio-economic background to engage in WIL re-
lated to cost of travel, or relocation costs, especially for short-term overseas WIL
opportunities.
Third, the effectiveness of guided learning is essential for WIL which largely
depends on the collaboration between the academic supervisor, the students,
and the industry supervisor (see Billett, 2002; Henderson & Trede, 2017).
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
[120] Gesta Regum, i. 4.
[121] Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, iii. 483. The names stand
as follows: “+ Ego Offa Rex Dei dono propriam donationis
libertatem signo sanctæ crucis confirmo. + Ego Ecgferth, filius
Regis, consensi. + Signum Hygeberhti Archiepiscopi. + Signum
Ceolulfi Episcopi. + Signum Æthelheardi Archiepiscopi.” Followed
by eight bishops and three abbats.
[122] It has already been noted that Alcuin found it very difficult
to shed tears.
[123] “Ceolmund the duke,” “Ceolmund the minister,” often
appears in the Mercian documents of the time.
[124] Simeon of Durham, under the year 779, has the entry,
Duke Aldred, the slayer of King Ethelred, was slain by Duke
Thorhtmund in revenge for his lord.
[125] This amounts to an official representation of the three
great powers, the West Saxons, the Mercians, and the
Northumbrians.
[126] Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 486.
[127] An Irishman.
[128] From 784 to 819.
[129] Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 487.
[130] We know nothing certain of this person.
[131] We cannot trace his pedigree.
[132] Simeon of Durham says that he committed suicide.
[133] In theory, at least, we know better now.
[134] a.d. 779 to 788.
[135] James ii. 13.
[136] Pet. iv. 17.
[137] He died in 703.
[138] He resigned in 716, and took from the library of
Wearmouth the Codex Amiatinus as a present to the Pope. This
huge and noble codex is now in the Laurenziana, in Florence.
See my Lessons from Early English Church History, pp. 72-75.
[139] See my Theodore and Wilfrith, pp. 106, 124, and for
Acca’s Cross, pp. 257-61.
[140] Bishop of Whithern (Candentis-Casae, Ep. 20, usually
Candidae Casae), 777-789; of Hexham, 789-797.
[141] Writing to an Englishman, Alcuin gives his Anglian name
in its Anglian spelling and without a Latin termination.
[142] See p. 123. The full story is given by Simeon of Durham
under the year 790, meaning 791: “In the second year of Ethelred
(i. e. of his restored sovereignty) Duke Eardulf was captured and
taken to Ripon, and was ordered by the said king to be put to
death outside the gate of the monastery. The brethren carried the
body to the church with Gregorian chants, and placed it in a shed
outside the door. He was found after midnight in the church,
alive.”
[143] In April, 796, the Patrician Osbald was made king by
certain leading men of the nation. But after twenty-seven days he
was deserted by the whole of the royal family and the chief men,
and was put to flight and banished from the kingdom. He escaped
with a few followers to the Isle of Lindisfarne, and thence went by
sea with some of the brethren to the king of the Picts. Sim. Dur.
795.
[144] Slain at Cobre (Corbridge has been suggested), April 18,
796.
[145] The Picts of the east of Scotland.
[146] Matt. xviii. 15, “Go and tell him his fault between thee and
him alone.”
[147] John viii. 34.
[148] Cant. viii. 7.
[149] 1 Tim. v. 20.
[150] Matt. xii. 50. It will be seen that Alcuin does not quote
exactly. The Vulgate has frater et soror et mater.
[151] Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum, p. 272.
[152] No doubt oil specially pure, and vegetable; we may safely
say olive oil, for purposes of chrism. Theodore of Canterbury
informs us (Theodore and Wilfrith, S.P.C.K. p. 180) that
“according to the Greeks a presbyter can ... make the oil for
exorcism and the chrism for the sick, if necessary; but according
to the Romans only a bishop can do so”. Hence the mention of
bishops in the letter of Alcuin. See also page 245, note 2.
[153] In this case Alcuin writes Karli regis; in other cases he
uses the full form Carolus, which comes from rolling the r in
Karlus.
[154] Shekels. On the argument that the didrachma was the
shekel in the New Testament the sicle may be put at 1s. 7½d., but
that gives no idea of its purchasing power then, which was
probably nearer £1. It will be seen that in a later sentence sicles
of pure gold are specified.
[155] See p. 79.
[156] As in year the Anglo-Saxon g was pronounced as y,
hence the name Mayo. In east Yorkshire a gate is still called a
yet.
[157] See Appendix B.
[158] The passage is incomplete, but this is the sense of it.
[159] This is not Lull of Malmesbury, who was so great a help to
Boniface; he died an archbishop in 787.
[160] A presbyter, who succeeded his namesake in the
archbishopric.
[161] We cannot imagine another dignity open to an aged
Archbishop of York to be preferred to that which he already held.
But it is evident that Alcuin referred to his retirement upon an
abbacy, which would set him comparatively free from calls for
exertion.
[162] Eph. v. 23.
[163] It has been supposed that Alcuin refers to some purpose
of bequeathing the library of York to Eanbald II.
[164] Ecclus. vi. 6.
[165] Ethelred of Northumbria was killed and Offa of Mercia
died in this year 796.
[166] James v. 11. Our version would have suited the occasion
better than the Vulgate, “Ye have heard of the patience of Job.”
[167] In the older MSS. in Deo, which has a subtle unintentional
bearing on the controversy with which we are dealing;
unintentional if, as seems certain, we possess MSS. of the
Athanasian symbol of a date earlier than the beginning of the
heresy of Felix.
[168] The punctuation is that of Wattenbach and Dümmler.
Migne puts a full stop after the Pope and another after the
Patriarch: this would seem to make singuli refer to two persons
only, the two bishops. The Roman controversialist makes a
different punctuation, putting a full stop after the Pope and
running the three others together. The whole passage ought to be
read in the Latin without any punctuation. See Appendix C, p.
319.
[169] Ep. 30, a.d. 793.
[170] But see p. 283.
[171] Bede i. 25, “Imaginem Domini salvatoris in tabula
depictam.”
[172] The historian-monk of St. Gallen says that his new eyes
were better than his old ones, both for use and to look at.
[173] Ep. 120, to Arno.
[174] The account which follows is taken from the
contemporary annals of Eginhart.
[175] Under the year 800.
[176] The actual words are given by Baronius, but with a vague
reference to his authority. They are given at length by Milman,
Hist. of Lat. Christianity, ii. 205.
[177] The ordinary word for the crypt or other receptacle of the
body of a saint.
[178] Stephen I was Pope 252 to 257. Another Stephen was
elected on March 14, 752, but died before his consecration. On
March 26, 752, the Stephen here spoken of was elected. He is
thus more properly called Stephen II than Stephen III; and
Stephen IV, who appears in Karl’s time, should be called Stephen
III. Many writers, however, call them Stephen III and Stephen IV.
[179] Labbe, Concil. xii. 539.
[180] Labbe, Concil. xii. 543.
[181] See p. 26.
[182] The district was rich in wine, fruit, flowers, and honey.
[183] Archbishop Albert of York; see p. 84.
[184] Solomon’s Song, iv. 12—v. 2.
[185] Isaiah, lv. 1.
[186] But see p. 209.
[187] There are great difficulties in the way of accepting this
statement of a mission by Karl in 773. The passage calls Albinus
deliciosus ipsius regis, and is quoted by Ducange as an evidence
of the use of the word. It appears to imply a more intimate
acquaintance than at that early date there can have been.
[188] In modern times, better wine is grown near Tours than
near Orleans. The wines of Vouvray, for example, beyond
Marmoutier, are much esteemed. A waiter at Tours concedes that
wine is still grown at Orleans, mais pas de spécialité comme ici.
[189] The spellings of ordinary names are varied in those times
almost at will, and it is interesting to note how often the letter h
plays a part in the variation.
[190] 1 Chron. xxvii. 27.
[191] Song of Songs, ii. 4. Alcuin takes on the whole the
Vulgate version. It will be seen by reference to the text and
margin of the Authorised and the Revised Versions that there is
much variety in the rendering of the Hebrew, especially as
regards the word here rendered “flowers”. The Septuagint gives a
sixth meaning, “perfumes” or “unguents”.
[192] 1 Chron. xxvii. 32. Alcuin makes here an unusually bold
use of Scripture, first in taking to himself the description of David’s
uncle, Jonathan, and then in putting into his mouth a cento of
phrases from Judges xvi. 4, Jer. xlviii. 33, Prov. v. 16.
[193] This song is built up from Song of Solomon vii. 12, v. 1, 2,
vii. 9, vi. 3, and Isa lv. 1.
[194] Song of Songs v. 3.
[195] Luke xi. 5, 7.
[196] 2 Sam. xxi. 1, 2.
[197] This appears to be going beyond a joke.
[198] Prov. xxv. 24.
[199] This is of course not the usually assigned derivation; but it
sounds the more reasonable of the two.
[200] Plate II.
[201] Plate III.
[202] Plate IV.
[203] Multitudo paganorum idolatriis dedita. Per cryptas et
latibula cum paucis Christianis per eumdem conversis, mysterium
solemnitatis diei Dominici clanculo celebrabat.
[204] See p. 221.
[205] For further extracts from Hadrian’s decree, see p. 228.
[206] His last testament is printed by Migne in the Appendix to
the works of Gregory of Tours, columns 1148-51. “Simul et omnes
libros meos praeter Evangeliorum librum quem scripsit Hilarius
quondam Pictavensis sacerdos quem tibi Eufronio fratri et
consacerdoti dilectissimo cum prefata theca do lego volo statuo.”
This theca was one of silver, containing relics of saints, which he
used to carry about with him. Another theca, gilt, was in his chest,
with two chalices of gold and a gold cross made by Mabuin; these
he left to his church.
[207] Gesta Regum, i. 3.
[208] See p. 203.
[209] But see p. 50.
[210] See p. 217.
[211] Printed in Gallia Christiana under Tours. See p. 228.
[212] See p. 217.
[213] It may be helpful to remember that the abbey was
originally outside the ancient Roman city, and its district was
called Martinopolis. The ancient Gallican bishoprics were
bishoprics of cities rather than of dioceses in our wide sense of
the word. This may conceivably have a bearing on the curious
question raised by Hadrian.
[214] See my Constitution of French Chapters, Proceedings of
St. Paul’s Ecclesiological Society, Vol. III, 1895.
[215] Micah v. 5, 6.
[216] James ii. 13.
[217] We know from other sources that this “&c.” meant Most
Serene Augustus, crowned by God, great peace-making
Emperor, Governor of the Roman Empire, by the mercy of God
King of the Franks and of the Lombards.
[218] The emperor irresistibly reminds us of the Eton master
and the boy who complained that his name was not that called for
punishment:—
Sive tu mavis Bōsănquet vocari

Sive Bōsănquet,
Te vapulabo.
[219] That is, Theodulfus, the Bishop of Orleans.

[220] Romans xiv. 4.
[221] 1 Kings xx. 42.
[222] This refers, no doubt, to the immunity of St. Martin’s from
the intervention of the Archbishop.
[223] Eulogias. Wattenbach and Dümmler gloss this cibos.
From its original meaning of the consecrated wafer it came to
mean the pain benit, then any present, and then a salutation.
There is no clue to its special meaning here.
[224] The character of the Latin verse may be gathered from
the closing words of this hexameter, est non laudabile cui nil.
[225] In another poem Theodulf begs Queen Luitgard to send
him some oil of balsam, to enable him to compose and
consecrate cream for chrism. We must suppose that Luitgard had
some special connexion with ports to which balsams were
brought.
Balsameum regina mihi transmitte liquorem,

Quo bene per populos chrismatis unguen eat.
Inde seges crescet tibimet mercedis opimae
Christicolum nomen cum dabit unguen idem.
[226] See p. 33.

[227] That is, a summary, epitome; not as yet a service-book.
[228] Ps. lxx. 14. The Vulgate, which Alcuin quotes, has more
point for his present purpose, adiiciam super omnem laudem
tuam, “I will add Thy praise above all praise.”
[229] Exod. xxiii. 8. Alcuin reads corda sapientium where the
Vulgate has prudentes.
[230] The letter was written in Lent. Easter day in 800 was April
19.
[231] These were Gisla, Charlemagne’s sister, and Rodtruda,
his daughter; see also p. 253.
[232] Adapted from chapters i and ii of Solomon’s Song.
[233]
Nomine pandecten proprio vocitare memento

Hoc corpus sacrum, lector, in ore tuo.
Quid nunc a multis constat bibliotheca dictum
Nomine non proprio, ut lingua pelasga probat.
A pandect was the whole Bible, Old and New Testament, as its
name, “containing everything,” implies. A bibliotheca, like our
word “library,” meant both a room or case where books were
stored, and also the collection of books in the place; hence it
might be used for the pandect, on the ground that it was a
collection of all the books of the Bible.
[234] Wattenbach and Dümmler, 223-4.
[235] See on this point pp. 86-9.
[236] See my Anglo-Saxon Coronation Forms, and the use of
the word Protestant in the Coronation Oath, S. P. C. K.
[237] That is, if the Pope has recovered from the attempt to
blind him and cut out his tongue.
[238] Presumably, if new charges are made against the Pope.
[239] A reference to Pliny’s Natural History, where wolves are
credited with this power; see also Virgil, Ecl. ix. 53, 54.
[240] A reference to Leo’s denial of the charges against him at
Paderborn, and also to St. Peter’s denial. We must credit Alcuin
with having seen that he would be taken to mean that one was as
true as the other. The denial was renewed at Rome, see p. 189.
[241] See p. 208.
[242] St. Martin’s at Tours.
[243] His pupils.
[244] See p. 72.
[245] It is a curious coincidence that the ivory comb found in St.
Cuthbert’s coffin, provided by Westone after the Norman
Conquest, had—as nearly as we can count—sixty teeth, sixteen
large and forty-four small. Alcuin’s comb may have had the same
double row of teeth, with a knob in the shape of a lion’s head
projecting from the ends of the central ivory.
[246] Monumenta Alcuiniana, Wattenbach and Dümmler, p. 63.
[247] Italian Alps, Longmans, 1875, Appendix D, pp. 371-3.
[248] Kemble, Cod. Dipl. ii. 208-62. Coolidge, Swiss Travel,
160. “Perpessus sit gelidis glacierum (and glaciarum) flatibus, et
pennino exercitu malignorum spirituum.”
[249] Gesta Pontificum, Rolls series, pp. 25, 26, 265.
[250] See my Lessons from Early English Church History, pp.
45, 46.
[251] Written from Rome; not preserved.
[252] Leo III.
[253] See p. 281 note.
[254] Leo III, see p. 188.
[255] There were two monasteries with this dedication. One of
these, Iuvavense, was at Salzburg, and probably it is the one to
which reference is made.
[256] See p. 168.
[257] It is probable that he was called Cuckoo from the refrain
of some favourite song of his. The Teutonic name for the “bird of
spring” was not a likely personal name, any more than cuckoo is
with us.
[258] See also Epistle 186 in Appendix A.
[259] Here, and in Ep. 108, to Arno, Alcuin combines two
phrases from the Song of Solomon, v. 7 and 8: “The watchmen
have wounded me,” “I am sick of love.” In the letter to Arno he
appears to quote the actual words of a text in his possession:
vulnerata karitate ego sum; in the present letter he writes caritatis
calamo vulneratus sum. The Vulgate has vulneraverunt me—
amore langueo. See p. 275.
[260] Eginhart in his life of Karl (ch. 25) states that the king
studied grammar under Peter of Pisa, an aged deacon.
[261] This was Angilbertus.
[262] That is, Eginhart, the man skilled in many arts, as was
Bezaleel, the chief architect of the Tabernacle.
[263] See p. 33.
[264] The Wends.
[265] Eginhard tells us under this year 789 that Karl crossed the
Rhine at Cologne with a great army, pushed through Saxony as
far as the Elbe, and brought the Wiltzi to terms. That, he says, is
their name in the Frank tongue. In their own tongue they are
Welatabi.
[266] The Huns, or Avars, had in the previous year invaded Italy
and Bavaria.
[267] See p. 151.
[268] “Amice carissime.”
[269] See my Aldhelm, S.P.C.K., p. 129.
[270] Mansi, Concilia, xiii. 937.
[271] Vienna, 1904.
[272] Cummings, History of Architecture in Italy, ii. 71.
[273] Pertz, Monumenta (Scriptores), ii. 665, 6.
[274] de ista die.
[275] savoir et pouvoir me donne.
[276] chacune.
[277] comme homme.
[278] droit.
[279] faciet.
[280] secundum meum velle.
[281] Concilium Liptinense.
[282] A photograph of this inscription is reproduced at p. 209 of
my Conversion of the Heptarchy.
[283] This must have come very near to being an umbrella.
[284] Dan. xiv. 35, Vulgate.
[285] Bonefatii. This was, of course, the great English
missionary Archbishop of Maintz, martyred at Dorkum in 755.
[286] 1 Cor. xv. 58.
[287] Rom. xii. 2.
[288] Based on 1 Pet. ii. 1.
[289] He was Abbat of Fulda from 780 to 802, when he
resigned the office.
[290] This, no doubt, is the origin of the tradition that Alcuin
wrote the Office for Trinity Sunday. See pp. 20, 173.
[291] Rom. xiv. 5.
[292] It will be observed that no mention is made of a king of
Kent. See p. 91.
[293] See the list on the next pages.
[294] This would indicate that the aula at which they had met
the king and held the council was one of Offa’s outlying manors,
and not his central royal residence.
[295] Supposed, on slight reasoning, to have been held at
Corbridge, see p. 216.
[296] Besides those in the Pope’s list.
[297] Sacerdos. It is uncertain to how late a date sacerdos is to
be rendered bishop.
[298] Wattenbach and Dümmler give only the headings of the
chapters, as here. The chapters themselves will be found in
Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 448-58.
[299] There are many injunctions that priests and others
serving at the altar must wear drawers. There is quite a large
literature on the subject of these garments (femoralia), in which
such of the early fathers as are given to symbolism find symbolic
meanings. They were an essential part of the dress of the
Levitical priesthood (Exod. xxviii. 42, 43).
[300] Probably referring to the practice of tattooing.
[301] Prudentius (Dipt. i. 3) has “Adam” not “humum”.
[302] This was Tilbert, Bishop of Hexham (Augustald) 781-789.
There is no reason of seniority or priority that should make him
sign above the Archbishop. If, as is probable, the Council was
held at Corbridge, in his diocese, he might sign first as bishop of
the place.
[303] Praesul. In the other signatures episcopus is used.
[304] Candens-casa, usually Candida-casa, so named from its
being the first church built of white stone in that region.
[305] Myensis. see p. 156. Aldulf was consecrated in 786, the
year of this Council, by Eanbald, Tilberht, and Hygbald, at
Corbridge. It is on this account that the Germans think the Council
was held at Corbridge. Hexham would equally meet the case, and
better meets the suggestion of a previous note.
[306] Not as yet identified.
[307] It is rather quaint that Sigha should have chosen placido
mente as the phrase to describe his manner of assent to No. 12
above, for two years later he killed King Aelfwald, and he
eventually died by his own hand.
[308] Of Ripon, 786-787.
[309] Some read Alquinum here, and make Alcuin one of the
two lectores.
[310] The text has two forms of this variously spelled name.
[311] Higbert of Lichfield 779-802.
[312] Lindsey 767-796. The Lindisfaras had nothing to do with
Lindisfarne.
[313] Leicester 781-802.
[314] Elmham 786-811, see p. 159.
[315] London 794-801.
[316] Kinbert of Winchester 785-801.
[317] Hendred of Dunwich, 781-789.
[318] Esne of Hereford 781-789.
[319] Tolta of Selsey 781-789.
[320] Rochester 785-803.
[321] Sherborn 766-793.
[322] Worcester 781-798.
[323] “Aimoini monachi, qui antea Annonii nomine editus est,
Historiae Francorum” Lib. V. Parisiis. 1567.
[324] Omitted in the quotation.
INDEX
A
Abrenuntiatio diaboli, 295.
Abulabaz, 289, 324.
Acca, 137.
Adalbert, 2, 27.
Adoptionism, 24, 174.
Adoration of Charlemagne, 190, 191.
Aigulf, 32.
Aimoin, 322.
Albert (York), 16, 53, 80.
Albinus (Alcuin), 15.
Alchfrith, 8.
Alchred, 122.
Alcuin, called Flaccus, 1;
Albinus, 15;
studies Virgil, 2, 11;
conversion, 11;
trained by Ecgbert, 12,
by Albert, 16;
a vision, 18;
ordained deacon, 19;
master of the School of York, 20;
joins Karl, 22;
revisits England, 24;
returns to France, 24;
refutes Felix, 25, 176, 299;
wishes to retire to Fulda, 26;
manner of life, 26;
knowledge of secrets, 2, 29, 30, 33, 34, 223;
extinguishes fire, 37;
writings, 42, 51-3,
poem on York, ch. iv,
lesser poems, 268, 277, 298,
a riddle, 268;
drinks wine, 45,
beer (not English, 267), 45 n.;
interview with the devil, 43;
death, 46, 303;
miracles, 49;
alms for his soul, 224;
his chief dates, 52, 85, 172;
the pallium, 77;
inherits the library of York, 84;
a fisherman, 268;
liturgical work, 260, 308;
singing, 260;
interest in missions, 285-9;
Bibles, 257;
advises reference to Hadrian, 177-9;
settles at Tours, 202;
his styles, 264-9;
mentions Eginhart, 283;
is mentioned by Eginhart, 284;
praised by William of Malmesbury, 52;
described by Theodulf, 45 n., 245.
Alcuin’s letters to:—
Abbat, an, 285.
Adalhard, 264.
Arno, 170, 235, 268, 270, 271, 273-6, 287, 289, 298, 299,
300.
Athilhard, 94, 115, 116, 117.
Beornwin, 98.
Bishop, a, (sanctuary), 234.
Britain, the pontiffs of, 157.
Candida Casa, 301.
Candidus and Nathanael, 231.
Charles (Karl’s son), 248, 250.
Colcu, 150, 286.
Cuckoo, the, 168, 169.
Dunwich and Elmham, 159, 301.
Eanbald I, 161.
Eanbald II, 164, 166, 167.
Eardulf, 141.
Elmham and Dunwich, 159, 301.
Etheldryth, 146, 148.
Fulda, 305.
Gisla and Rotruda, 253.
Hexham, 137.
Hibernia, 153.
Higbald, 132, 170, 287.
Jarrow, 135.
Joseph, 267.
Karl, 117, 191, 202, 208, 238, 247 (?), 254, 287, 300, 301,
302.
Kenulf, 109.
Leo III, 77.
Lindisfarne, 132, 135.
Mayo, 154.
Megenfrid, 288.
Mercian, a, 107.
Offa, 93, 103.
Osbald, 143.
Paulinus, 270.
Pepin, 252.
Peter of Milan, 270.
Pontiffs of Britain, 157.
Remedius, 270.
Rotruda, 253.
Theodulf, 206.
Uulfhard, 205.
Wearmouth, 135.
York, 162.
Aldhelm, 52, 107.
Aldric, 2.
Alfwold, 123.
Alps, 269-72.
Amalgarius, 242.
Anglo-Saxon, Coronation Forms, 261-3.
Anglo-Saxon, Earliest Examples of, 296, 297.
Archpresbyters, 230.
Areida, 151.
Arno, 47, 276.
Aust, 114.
B
Baldhuninga, 151.
Balther, 79.
Bede, letter to Ecgbert, ch. iii.
Bede, Story of, 70.
Beer, 45 n.
Beer, acid in Northumbria, 267.
Benedict of Aniane, 30.
Beornrad, 7.
Bewcastle Cross, 9, 57, 296.
Bibles, Alcuin’s, 257.
Billfrith, 125.
Biscop, 127.
Bishops, their conduct, 55.
Bishops, dioceses too large, 57.
Bishops, election of, 163.
Boniface, 26, 285, 305.
Boniface, his abrenuntiatio diaboli, 295.
Bouulf, 307.
Bremen, 285.
British Museum, Alcuin’s Bible, 257.
C
Ceolfrith, 78.
Charlemagne, see Karl.
Chur, 269.
Coire, 269.
Colcu, 150-3.
Cold in the Alps, 271-3.
Columba, see Rotruda.
Comb, riddle of, 269.
Constantine Copronymus, 201.
Constantine the Great, Donation by, 195, 320.
Constantine VI, 193.
Cormery, 31, 223-8.
Coronation Forms, Anglo-Saxon, 261-3.
Cuckoo, the (Cuculus), Arno’s letter to, 276.
Cuckoo, Alcuin’s lament on, 277.
D
Danes, 126.
Devil, interview of Alcuin with, 43;
of St. Martin, 44.
Dictated letters, &c., 7.
Donation of Constantine, 195, 320, 321.
Drithelme, vision of, 273.
Dunwich, 159, 301.
E
Eadbert, 76, 122.
Eadfrith, 125.
Eanbald I (York), 21, 161.
Eanbald II, 163-9.
Eanred, 124.
Eardulf, 123.
Eata, 79.
Ecgbert (Ireland), 8.
Ecgbert (York), 12, 13, 53, 54, 76.
Ecgfrith, 106.
Eginhard (Bezaleel), 33, 283, 284.
Elephants, 289-92.
Elfwald, 124.
Elmham, 159, 301.
Epternach, 6.
Ethelred I, 123.
Ethelred II, 124.
Ethelwald, 122, 125.
F
Felix, 174-9, 298.
Ferrières, 1, 28.
Frankfort, Council of, 183.
Fredegisus (Fridugisus), 27, 226, 227, 256.
Fulda, 26, Appendix A.
G
George, legate, 310.
Gisla (Lucia), 253;
letter to Alcuin, 254, 256.
Graduale, 260.
Gregory, Pope, the Pastoral Care, 169-71.
H
Hadrian I, 21;
raises Lichfield to an Archbishopric, ch. v;
fears Offa, 92;
to be consulted on a treatise of Felix, 177;
letter to Karl, 323.
Harun al Raschid, 324.
Hereditary descent, 5-7.
Hexham, 137.
Higbald, 132.
Huguenots, 210.
I
Image-worship, 181-3.
Irene, 193.
Itherius, 217, 224-6.
J
Jaenbert of Canterbury, despoiled, ch. v.
Jarrow, 127, 135.
Joseph, Archbishop of Tours, ch. xiv.
K
Karl, 21, 22;
visits Alcuin at Tours, 31;
loved foreigners, 33;
invites Alcuin, 54;
quarrels with Offa, 98;
letters to Offa, 99, 119;
letter to Athelhard, 120;
his visits to Rome, 186-91;
grants to Cormery, 225;
blames the brethren of St. Martin’s, ch. xiv;
letter to Alcuin (sanctuary), 235;
described by Theodulf, 245;
questions to Alcuin, 280-4;
described by Eginhart, 284.
Kenulf, 93, 111.
L
Languages of Carolingian times, 292-6.
Lectores, 317.

Ebook Developing and Utilizing Employability Capitals Graduates Strategies Across Labour Markets 1St Edition Tran Le Huu Nghia Online PDF All Chapter

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Ebook Developing and Utilizing Employability Capitals Graduates Strategies Across Labour Markets 1St Edition Tran Le Huu Nghia Online PDF All Chapter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Developing and Utilizing Employability

Capitals Graduates Strategies across

Developing Sustainable Energy Projects in Emerging

Labour Markets Institutions and Inequality Building

Social Media Marketing: Strategies in Utilizing

House of Sticks 1st Edition Ly Tran [Tran

New Approach to Cultural Heritage Profiling Discourse

Developing Metacognitive Teaching Strategies Through

Bond Markets Analysis and Strategies 10th edition Frank

Migrants Refugees and Asylum Seekers Integration in

Graduate employability is a significant concern for most higher education institu-

Tran Le Huu Nghia is a research fellow in work-integrated learning and gradu-

Thanh Pham is a lecturer in graduate employability and higher education at the

Michael Tomlinson is an associate professor and a leading researcher in gradu-

Karen Medica is a lecturer and researcher in work-integrated learning at Monash

Christopher D. Thompson is Associate Dean (Education) at the Faculty of

Post-Recession Community College Reform

Building Soft Skills for Employability

Life for the Academic in the Neoliberal University

The Doctorate Experience in Europe and Beyond

The Thinking University Expanded

Developing and Utilizing Employability Capitals

The Dispositif of the University Reform

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/

ISBN: 978-0-367-43628-5 (hbk)

List of figures vii

Associate Professor Denise Jackson is Director of Work-Integrated Learning in

Dr Tran Le Huu Nghia is currently a research fellow in work-integrated learn-

Dr Lam H Pham is a former pharmacist and pharmaceutical scientist/lecturer

The aim of this chapter is to provide an introductory overview of the current

The employability discourse

Contextual dynamics in graduate employability

Unpacking student and graduate perceptions of the

Career readiness and career capitals

Developing student understanding of labour market trends can be coupled with

The current book

Part 2: Graduates’ reflection on their career development journeys

Part 3: Graduate employability and career

Characteristics of the 21st-century labour market

New work arrangements and patterns

The skills-based approach

Work-integrated learning (WIL)

Limitations of the employability related initiatives

Limitations of the skills-based approach to developing

Sive tu mavis Bōsănquet vocari

[219] That is, Theodulfus, the Bishop of Orleans.

Balsameum regina mihi transmitte liquorem,

[226] See p. 33.

Nomine pandecten proprio vocitare memento

You might also like