Purpose: This study aims to explore a specific case of the alleged mismatch between higher education and employability by investigating long-term work life outcomes for graduates from a small university college in Sweden, and the associations between these outcomes and the graduates' social background, academic achievements and study approach in…

This article focuses on 'successful migrants', who have succeeded in gaining employment in Sweden in their previous vocational area. The aim is to describe factors on various levels -- individual, organisational and national -- that have facilitated migrants' way back to work as well as their inclusion at workplaces. Twenty migrants and five…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide an example of best practice towards enhancing employability in the cross-sectoral labour market for doctorate-holders. This was achieved through an Erasmus+ KA2 (Strategic Partnership) skills development project which created a training programme (TRANSPEER) involving a multi-disciplinary cohort of…

People with intellectual disabilities are the most disadvantaged group among all disability types when it comes to employment. In Sweden, special needs upper secondary schools prepare students with intellectual disabilities for the labour market using practice periods at workplaces. This study targets stakeholder involved in their school-to-work…

Context: This study is about vocational education and training for adults within municipal adult education (MAE). Sweden has a long tradition of adult education, and has one of the world's highest proportions of participants in adult education. The Swedish education system is characterised by extensive marketisation with many private actors,…

Significant variations in educational attainment and labour market outcomes exist not only across OECD countries but also within them. Some regions concentrate the human capital of a country. In particular, many countries' capital regions stand out for their high share of tertiary-educated people. However, overall employment prospects are often…

Across OECD countries, more and more individuals have attained tertiary education and the share of those with less education has declined. Although there are more tertiary-educated individuals than ever before, they still achieve good labour market outcomes. This confirms that labour market demand is generally keeping pace with rising educational…

A decade ago, the world was not prepared for the widespread impact of the global financial recession. Gradually, the operating focus of higher education sector in many high-income countries around shifted, causing budget-cuts to become a recurring and dominant theme. Yet, at the same time, the expanding middle-class in emerging countries were keen…

This article focuses on job and career coaching provided by a multinational company, as a means of learning how to become employable. On the basis of a critical discourse analysis informed by Fairclough, we interrogate tips and advice in blog posts written by job and career coaches on the company's website. The aim of the article is to examine the…

Building on narratives of students in adult education in Sweden, where the majority of the students are young adults, this paper argues that adult education has both negative and positive aspects in helping individuals to be recognised as valuable. Students, often part of the precariat class, have not always been able to survive in the job market…

Ample evidence indicates that a person's human capital is important for success on the labor market in terms of both wages and employment prospects. However, unlike the efforts to identify the impact of school attainment on labor-market outcomes, the literature on returns to cognitive skills has not yet provided convincing evidence that the…

The Swedish government recently launched a number of short-term initiatives within the framework of formal adult education. These initiatives are: vocational adult education, education for commercial drivers and apprenticeship education for adults. The new initiatives can be seen as education for the short-term needs of the world of work and we…

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the link between age and proficiency in information-processing skills, based on information drawn from the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC). The data reveal significant age-related differences in proficiencies, strongly suggesting that proficiency tends to "naturally" decline with age. Age…

This article investigates the relation between the second chance of increase in formal education amongst low-educated adults in Sweden and long-term wage development. Despite the awareness of the role of education for employability and individuals' overall life chances, surprisingly few studies have investigated the wage effects of Second-Chance…

In the last couple of decades, there has been a shift from speaking about employment to speaking about employability. The interest in this article is directed at how discourses on employability are mobilised in the wider discursive terrain of governance. How does governance operate, what subject is produced and, more specifically, who is…