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.…

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 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…

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,…

This article provides a response to the other contributions in this special issue and explores the range and scale of the opportunities for policy learning across the four UK nations. It addresses the importance of locating FE and skills policy within wider national policy contexts, national choices between markets and systems and the wider…

In order to address the problems of graduate employability in Malaysia, the Malaysian Government produced in 2012, the "National Graduate Employability Blueprint" 2012-2017. In addition to setting out in detail the government's philosophy and vision, the blueprint identifies key players who are expected to play crucial roles in making…

Internships are work-based learning experiences, but when they are unpaid and become the standard after formal education, they imply an opportunity cost and could add to the formation of obstacles to the socio-economic mobility that (public) education should seek to attenuate. The present study consists of an evaluation of the intern economy in…

This study is based on the presumption that there is often an underuse of temporary staff in client companies (CC) with highly skilled professionals. The study combines theories of the flexible organisation and a sociocultural perspective on learning within the framework of an inter-organisational context. The data are based partly on 17…

Higher education institutions, communities, and employers experience challenges as young professionals continually adjust their workplace-participation views and behaviours. Higher education institutions face changes in student demand for job-oriented training, and the associated attrition from established programmes is costly. Communities find it…

This article considers the implications of a 'managed' approach to skills policy in Scotland, in which Government policy and the role of national institutional frameworks can be seen to be influential, and which contrasts with the more marketised approach which has been a central aspect of policy in England. A number of themes within these…

In Finland, doctoral employment outside the academy has been increasing. Universities can no longer absorb the numbers in the doctoral labour force and research and development (R&D) policy emphasises the need for specialised research capacity in non-academic sectors; the highest academic degree is assumed to add value. However, the transition…

In this paper, we examine the nature of and reasons for employer-funded literacy, language and numeracy (LLN) workplace training in New Zealand, during a period where government funding has been available. To place these programmes in context, we give a historically nuanced account of employer-funded programmes in New Zealand and then look at the…