This article traces the development of four narratives of financial assistance for Australian university students - to encourage excellence; to meet public need; to build the stock of human capital; and as universal provision - and their effect on the development of a fifth narrative, centred on the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS).…

Purpose: The value of transverse skills, including human capabilities, has been acknowledged for a significant period of time by major organisations such as UNESCO and the World Economic Forum. This paper reports on the application of microcredentials linked to the Human Capability Framework in a major telecommunications organisation that has a…

This paper contributes to debates that shaped a special issue of "Discourse" in 2017 by taking the debate about "responsibilisation" in education into the realm of Foundations Skills in Australia. The difficulties that many Australian adults experience with low levels of language, literacy and numeracy skills (Foundation…

Migrant academics' teaching, research and leadership knowledge and skills are essential and valued in their host higher education institutions, globally. However, there is limited evidence on understanding migrant academics' career capital experiences in Australian universities. Drawing on a career capital framework, this qualitative study…

This study explores perceived skill outcomes among graduates of 39 Australian higher education institutions in the short- to medium-term after course completion. While acknowledging important dimensions of graduate employability beyond the skills-based approach, we investigated graduate perspectives on their industry-relevant skill outcomes from…

Purpose: Since the early 2000s there has been increased attention on the professionalisation of the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) workforce in many OECD countries. This study focuses on what Australian early childhood educators holding the lowest level of qualification -- Certificate III are experiencing in relation to their…

This paper explores how students participating in a co-curricular scholarship programme in a large Australian university develop their employability. It seeks to add to recent literature regarding different approaches to graduate employability through examining how participating students' capital acquisition is shaped by and internalised within…

This study deployed a mixed-method approach to explore how international graduates identified and strategically utilised their resources to negotiate employability in the host country. One hundred and eighty international graduates from Australian universities participated in a survey and in-depth interviews. Findings revealed that employability…

T his paper presents an assessment of suggestions in international research and media that the modern construction cadetship experience is exploitative and, on that basis, problematises the growing trend of work integrated learning (WIL) in the Australian construction industry. Field research, aligning with the methodologies of major studies in…

Outbound student mobility can be regarded as an important foreign policy initiative to exert and increase national influence in host locations. But how to evaluate the specific soft power influences remains unsolved. In this article, an educational soft power framework that can provide a reference in evaluating soft power of related education…

Do employers prioritize university prestige above an applicant's skills in the hiring process? To distinguish between the effect of human capital in the hiring process from the effect of the name of the graduating university--while controlling for networking effects--2,400 fictitious applications were submitted to IT and accounting jobs in the US,…

Research Managers and Administrators (RMAs) face various challenges caused by conflicting and contradictory organizational subcultures in knowledge-intensive organizations (KIOs), but their human capital, such as skills and personality traits, helps RMAs to maintain job and organizational engagement and professional growth. Focusing on…

International higher education in many developed countries and more particularly in the United States and Australia has become a great source of revenue for their economies from students of the developing and underdeveloped countries (Least Development Countries). Money together with the mobility of international students from Least Development…

Purpose: This study explores practitioners' perspectives on the perceived gap between university and practice beyond the hard and soft skill paradigm. Utilising Tomlinson's graduate capital model of employability (2017), we explored human, social, cultural, and psychological capitals to enrich the understanding of this issue and employability. It…

This article revisits the Mincer earnings function and presents comparable estimates of the average monetary returns associated with an additional year of education across different regions worldwide. In contrast to the traditional Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method commonly employed in the literature, this study applied a cutting-edge approach…