Degree apprenticeships offer a new route to a degree in UK higher education, with policymakers emphasising their social mobility potential to widen access to graduate professions. In this context, this article compares the employability perceptions and strategies of aspiring solicitors on traditional university and degree apprenticeship routes in…

Higher education and elite professional occupations are considered to be key sources of social mobility. In this paper, we suggest that examining patterns of admission into professional undergraduate programmes, a key route for entry into elite professional occupations, may provide important insights into social mobility through higher education.…

Assessment in higher education with a transformational instead of a reproductive purpose can be a powerful way of supporting student learning. Since university teachers usually design their own assessments, it is important to investigate their conceptions of assessment. The current study focuses on teachers' conceptions of their current and ideal…

Using the China Family Panel Studies, we identify the subjects studied by vocational college and university graduates, with the latter group further divided into ordinary and key universities. While the returns are around 8-10% to attending colleges and ordinary universities, there are higher returns of 12-16% per annum to attending the more…

Despite vast research on transitioning to higher education and student diversity, little longitudinal evidence exists of how individual differences of first-year students predict their graduation times. The present study explored the relation between first-year students' study profiles and graduation times in two different disciplines, by…

This paper examines students' views about the purpose of university education and its role in their future employability in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. Data was gathered through focus groups with 172 undergraduate students. Findings suggest that due to socio-economic pressures, students largely see the purpose of university in terms of its economic…

This article discusses the findings of a recent study which demonstrates that generic attributes are highly context-dependent, and are shaped by the disciplinary epistemology in which they are conceptualised and taught. Generic attributes have, for a long time, been viewed as super-disciplinary, and hence as separated from and overlayed onto…

This interim report analyzed attitudes of 69 practicing professionals (doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, accountants, architects, and engineers) toward professional continuing education in the United Kingdom, particularly as it becomes institutionalized. The study identified some characteristic approaches to coping with unfamiliar demands and…