The student workforce plays a substantial part in several low-paying industries such as retail and hospitality, and this has grown over time. However, there has been little recent research. The usual assumption is that students compete successfully with the local labour force for low-skill, part-time jobs, but there is little evidence for this.…

The paper brings together a range of debates on the left that address TVET's future in current context. At the heart of these debates rest two issues. The first addresses competing views of capital and the second focuses on the contradiction between the interests of capital and workers. The paper argues that capital is not all of a piece and that…

This paper focuses on how generic skills can be developed to enable young adults to best utilise them in making transitions into the labour market. Drawing on the literature and a Commercial Education Trust study of practices which encourage employer engagement in skills development, it is argued that 'putting skills to work' is not automatic or…

With successive changes to apprenticeship policy, shifting emphasis on the amount of involvement of employers in engaging and delivering apprenticeship, and an over-reliance on further education to fill the gaps in the midst of its own storm, this article explores the successful ingredients for employer engagement in apprenticeship and vocational…

Changes in wages and other job characteristics during an individual's career are often the result of job mobility. Using a sample of Bavarian university graduates, this work analyses the effects that employer changes have on men's and women's wages. For this, employer changes are grouped into three categories in order to account for different…

This article explores the underexamined idea of employer engagement as the institutional agency around the supply-demand relationship surrounding education and training (E&T) and VET in England (2012), arguing why VET needs are still likely to be unmet. A single case-study methodology and forty convergent interviews with high-skill employers…

This article reports on a nation-wide tracer study conducted by the Institute for Educational Planning and Administration (IEPA), which examined how her graduates were utilised by employers in sectors of the Ghanaian economy. Considering the nature of the research context and the dearth of information regarding placement and utilisation of IEPA…

There are growing claims that increasing skill mismatch, or skill deficit, is impeding further economic growth and industrialisation in Vietnam. Previous studies often attributed it to the failure of supply-side initiatives to meet increasing skill demand. However, it is still uncertain whether skill demand is increasing in Vietnam, as the…

This paper explores the implications for higher education of the emergence of new industries, driven by technological changes. The pace of technology-driven changes creates significant challenges for the alignment between the skill needs of industry and provision by higher education. Drawing on concepts from neo-correspondence theory, we examine…

This case study examines the ways in which employers recruit undergraduate students on U.S. college campuses for internship opportunities. More students today are completing internships than ever before, and career services offices on college campuses are increasingly partnering with employers to promote these opportunities. For students,…

In this study we investigate the educational attainment of the labour force in the United States. Our data analysis, based on Bureau of Labour Statistics data in more than 700 occupations, produced two important findings. First, we observed that the Overeducation Ratio (share of employees that are overeducated), which began to rise in the United…

Incorporation into the labour market is a key endeavour, of heightened importance in recent years due to high migration flows, for both immigrants and their recipient countries. Hence, activation and employability are major themes in both transnational and national policy discussions, which have generated various programmes and policy measures.…

Apprenticeship systems across the globe are having to adapt to changing international economic and social trends. England is no exception. This article examines the latest model of apprenticeship in England from the perspective of the "mediators" who work at local and regional level with employers to construct and deliver the majority of…

This paper investigates the responsibilities and membership of Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) in England in the light of devolution of employment and skills responsibilities. Through the theoretical lens of 'hollowing out' and a direct comparison with the late-Thatcherite Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs) of the 1990s, the paper argues…

During the 25 years since Incorporation, when further education (FE) colleges were taken out of local government control, FE in England has been shaped by processes of marketisation to become a competitive national sector that has increasingly diverged from the more 'collaborative system logic' of the other three countries of the UK. However,…