This article analyses online job advertisements to identify skills that are demanded in selected low- and medium-skilled occupations. We explore data from the publicly administered cross-European EURES job search portal and quantify the different cognitive and non-cognitive skills requested by employers in small European economies. While we find…

Research across several countries has shown that degree classification (i.e. the final grade awarded to students successfully completing university) is an important determinant of graduates' first destination outcome. Graduates leaving university with higher degree classifications have better employment opportunities and a higher likelihood of…

Vocational qualifications in England are undergoing another round of reform. This paper starts by reviewing the alleged weaknesses of English vocational qualifications, but argues that these do not necessarily establish a case for radical reform. The issue is not so much whether the system needs to be changed as the nature of the change that is…

"Return to school" for enhancement of career is considered a means to career mobility. However, if "return to school" is chosen after a certain stage it has its own costs and challenges. It becomes more complex, especially for women, if geographical distance from family becomes an additional variable to it. Present study,…

This article presents the major findings of an international study that attempted to investigate the labour market outcomes of qualifications frameworks in six countries--Belize, France, Ireland, Jamaica, Sri Lanka, and Tunisia, as well as the regional framework in the Caribbean. It finds limited evidence of success, but fairly strong support for…

This article reports a study that investigated student engagement and inhibitors of their engagement with developing employability skills via extra-curricular activities in Vietnamese universities. Content analysis of 18 interviews with students and statistical analysis of 423 students' responses to a paper-based survey showed that despite a…

The issue of modularising vocational education and training (VET) systems has been the subject of heated debate in many European countries. In particular, in Scotland the use of modules within the curriculum has been seen as either restrictive or liberating depending upon the theoretical stance taken. At a more pragmatic level modularisation of…

This article argues that the current social settlement underpinning vocational education and training (VET) in Australia is fractured. The current settlement is low trust and consists of qualifications based on competency-based training models of curriculum and competitive markets. The result is narrow qualifications that do not prepare people for…

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of university and vocational education, and other influences on a variety of labour market outcomes for Australian youths aged between 16 and 25. The six labour market outcomes investigated are: occupational status, hourly and weekly earnings, employment, unemployment and full-time work. 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…

For over a decade policy-makers have claimed that advanced industrial societies should develop a knowledge-based economy (KBE) in response to economic globalisation and the transfer of manufacturing jobs to lower cost countries. In the UK, this vision shaped New Labour's policies for vocational education and training (VET), higher education and…

While acknowledging that a system of vocational qualifications might be perceived as having any number of possible purposes, this paper identifies three primary functions that any vocational qualification must fulfil by dint of being a vocational qualification. It is argued that current arrangements are unable to fulfil these essential functions…

Since the 1980s, growing globalisation and economic restructuring coupled with expansion of tertiary education contributed to tremendous change in the labour market entry process in Europe. Most previous studies have been quantitative, concentrated on the supply aspect and analysed the role of education as the explanatory variable of youth labour…

The involvement of business, including the engagement of employers, with the education sector, in particular across the secondary phase, has been a contested area for over 30 years. A recent example of employer engagement is the development of the new Diploma qualifications, introduced as part of the 14-19 education reform in England and…

This paper adds to current discourses around employability by arguing for an explicit recognition of gender, in particular in relation to women's employment in male-dominated sectors such as science, engineering and technology. This is not limited to young first-time graduates but continues and evolves throughout the life course. Mature women…