'Quality' in education is difficult to define. What is viewed as high quality by staff, students and employers must be identified so that universities can articulate their offer. Equally, helping students develop the graduate skills and attributes that employers value is essential. This project explored quality in higher education from the…

The aim of this paper is to explore the challenges and opportunities of designing and delivering Degree and Higher Level Apprenticeships (D&HLAs) at levels 4-7 from a multi-stakeholder perspective namely employers, Universities, independent training organisations and professional bodies. Twenty-seven face-to-face interviews were undertaken and…

As human capital came to the fore in the discourse on economic growth, so too has the concepts of employment prospects and employability attributes as students transit to the labor market. This paper examines three issues in this transition in the context of Malaysia. These are, first, how important is employment prospects a consideration when…

Where do workers with Higher Education (HE) degrees develop their work skills? Although few would expect these to be developed in HE exclusively, there exists an assumption that the core skills of those working in graduate occupations are predominantly formed at HE. This article examines how within four graduate occupations, employers and workers…

Universities have responded to the expansion of higher education and restructuring of the labour market by redesigning curriculum to better emphasise transferable skills and embed pedagogies that contribute to graduate employability. However, the ways in which universities judge and share achievement still provides poor evidence of what students…

Malaysia has made significant progress in advancing access to education over the last two decades, having achieved the education goals of the UN's Millennium Development Goals. Unfortunately, this has not been accompanied by quality improvement, with reports of "unemployable" graduates a frequent refrain. This paper reports on a study of…

It has been suggested that higher education institutions (HEIs) may develop different activity profiles (including research, teaching and socio-economic engagement) in their attempt to maximise the fit between institutional resources and strategic opportunities; the latter include strategies of engagement with different groups of external…

Internationally, the increasing emphasis in universities on the quality of teaching, on student employability and on a corporate approach to entrepreneurial income generation has created a tension around the primacy afforded to published research outputs as a focus for academic work and status. In this study, a framework for academic socialisation…

Researchers of the future will need to be able to work across the increasingly porous boundaries between university, industry, government and community sectors. Concerns have been raised internationally for several decades about the content and approaches adopted in doctoral programs. Innovative doctoral programs that facilitate students'…

A two-year study in Great Britain examined employer motivation, competition for support, student attitudes about sponsorship, and student expectations about future employment. Results indicate positive industrial attitudes toward sponsorship. (MSE)