A significant body of literature on international education examines the experiences of international students in the host country. There is however a critical lack of empirical work that investigates the dynamic and complex positioning of international students within the current education-migration nexus that prevails international education in…

Sandwich placements and other integrated work and study schemes are increasingly advocated as a key means by which universities can promote students' employability. However, there is little understanding of how successful placements work in terms of facilitating learning and development. Drawing on three longitudinal case studies of students who…

Students can benefit from applying their emerging skillsets through a work placement, both in terms of consolidating their learning and in gaining a better appreciation of their subject area. However, the main motivation for students in completing a work placement is in their increased employability skills. The aim of this study is to identify the…

Work-integrated learning (WIL) has been identified as a way of equipping graduates with attributes that make them work-ready. Many higher education institutions (HEIs) require their students to go through a compulsory work place learning form (WPL) of WIL. The complications of WPL can affect HEIs' student throughput. To address this challenge, a…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report on research carried out with employers to determine demand for business and management skills in the Scottish workforce. Design/methodology/approach: The research used a questionnaire in which employers were interviewed (either telephone or face to face), completed themselves and returned by e-mail,…

Current political and economic discourses position employability as a responsibility of higher education, which deploys mechanisms such as supervised work experience (SWE) to embed employability skills development into the undergraduate curriculum. However, workplaces are socially constructed complex arenas of embodied knowledge that are gendered.…

There is a growing awareness in the UK and mainland Europe of the importance of higher education to the development of a knowledge-based economy. European universities are increasingly required to produce highly mobile graduates able to respond to the ever-changing needs of the contemporary workplace. Following the Bologna Declaration (1999),…

Increasing expectations are being placed on higher education institutions to ensure the economic relevance of research and knowledge creation as well as developing the skill needs of workers in modern knowledge-based societies. In the UK, workplace learning has long been a feature of higher education in certain subject areas, and in the late 1990s…

There has been an increasing emphasis on employability within the higher education curriculum. Supervised work experience, particularly in the form of a placement year, has been an established means of providing experiences which are intended to enhance employability. This study examines a relatively neglected but important aspect of supervised…

The rapid growth in undergraduate business education over the last three decades has coincided with the growing dominance of an economic ideology of higher education (HE); that its role is principally one of contributing to national competitiveness through the development of graduate "employability". In particular, undergraduate business…

The importance of employability in higher education and increasing numbers of students working while studying led leaders on a social science degree to introduce work experience modules. This paper reports on an in-depth case study based on the analysis of staff and student interviews, the students' reflective assignments, and a focus group…

This paper explores the expectations of higher education responsiveness of key employer, education, and training constituencies in South Africa. Empirical data was gathered through a series of focus group and individual interviews, and analysed in terms of distinctions in the ideal relationship between education and the workplace. The paper…

Data from two surveys were gathered to inform recommendations on how to increase women prisoners' employability upon release in Great Britain. The first survey focused on 567 inmates' work experience and training prior to and during incarceration, as well as their expectations for life outside prison. About 33% of the women worked immediately…

A survey of 111 campus recruiters of graduating students shows agreement that interviews are the most important selection method. Students' verbal communication skills, character, work experience, and academic performance were judged the most important personal characteristics in applicants. Work-related expectations and attitudes were the most…

As one activity of the Workplace Mentorship study, 75 interviews were conducted in 15 programs to examine 30 mentorships. In each program five persons were interviewed: two mentors, two students, and one program staff person. Students were in eleventh or twelfth grade or recently out of high school. The interviews collected from the three types of…