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about employability in the UK. Employability reports continued to increase, and HEI displayed concentrated attention on employability.
Policymakers kept repeating their concentration on employability and their associations with employers, contributing to increasing pressure on HEIs. In the next section, the stakeholder introduced will be HEIs.
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2.4.1 The Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and Internship
In a recent study, Montague et al., (2018) infer that HEIs are bound to excel in the delivery of training programmes and more so in understanding the employability of their participants’
viewpoints. The development of students’ employability skills is a priority because, first, institutions need to supply the demands of employers (Business Magazine and Verde Frontier Employability Survey, 2016). Second, often graduates becoming long-life learners while having a return on their investment in higher training and development (Rothwell & Rothwell, 2017).
Rae (2007) concedes that HEIs have already tried an employability scheme since 2000. Unlike this, Nankervis et al., (2018) argue that employers question HEIs' strategies on employability.
Employability is fundamental to the policy goals of the government. Research studies have also identified and highlighted that both government and employers view employability as a key economic and social target. Therefore, policymakers and employers are putting pressure on HEIs to carry out more internships in the sandwich model for students studying at degree level (Clarke, 2017). They also compel HEIs to satisfy the needs of students and graduates.
In recent years, there has been increasing literature on the progressive role of HEIs (Robbins, 1963; Leitch, 2006; Dearing 1997; Wilson, 2012; OECD, 2016; Canadian Council of Chief Executives, 2014). Policymakers’ strategy on higher education is to keep employability on a continuing agenda (ILO, 2015). The mindset of lecturers’ changes when employability skills are inserted into the curricula, and they try to increase their students’ engagement to learn these skills (Lin, 2017b). They emphasize the need for HEIs to have an employability onset awareness, responding to both graduates and employers. HEIs all over the world and in Australian universities have answered to the particular importance of employability skills by setting up the identity of qualities of graduates, stating that they will train their students during their studies (Rothwell & Rothwell, 2017). The survey of Montague et al., (2018) concedes that employers ask higher education institutions to take part in an internship and to offer a quality contribution towards economic growth. Further, HEIs are noticed as critical causes in supplying graduates full of competencies that could contribute towards the economy (World Bank, 2017).
Surveys such as that conducted by Dalziel (2012) shows that many universities have tried to develop an employability strategy largely to add value to the qualification offered. They wish to make the training programme more attractive to large numbers of applicants. One strategy is that students receive more opportunities for work experience, although this will depend on the collaborating employer and HEI (Jackson, 2015).
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The study of Wilton (2011) on recent policy documents, identifies the central controversy within the role of higher education institutions in a changing world. Universities exist as institutions for creating and spreading knowledge. Universities hold a more student development focus not leading to future workforce demands (Burgess et al., 2018; Monteiro et al., 2016; O’Neill, 2010).
Universities are not now, nor have ever been, focussing on preparing inexperienced people for the workforce and careers (World Bank, 2017). The general idea of employability has been disputed in the conventional notions of higher education and has raised many questions on the results of higher education (Cavanagh et al., 2015).
Studies have admitted that academics believed the knowledge taught in universities to be theoretical with understanding a specific field of study (Rothwell & Rothwell, 2017). Other researchers admit that inserting employability skills into the curriculum will cause the content of other subjects to decrease and therefore, present subject matters will not be covered (Majumdar, 2016). In Australia and other parts of the world, most universities now command their faculty staff or lecturers to take responsibility for inserting the graduates’ qualities in their curricula into their institution (Chang, 2016b). However, academics refuse to train students in employability skills (Gore & Carter, 2011; Speight et al., 2013). Lecturers prefer to teach according to the underlying philosophy of teaching academic subject matters. However, Wheeler (2008), gives details of the controversy that exists among academic staff as conflicting pressures, scarcity of resources and original opinions. Gore and Carter (2011) defend this idea and argue that on one hand academic staff wish to keep the traditional academic values. Meanwhile, other academics are supporting the employability organised plan and agreed to teach these skills. Monteiro et al., (2016) argue that despite these inconsistencies among the individual perspectives within HEIs, most academics have adopted an employability agenda. I devote HEIs to growing students with their academic programmes and other extra-curricular activities (UTM, 2016). HEIs aims to produce competent graduates not only for the workplace but also for other assignments they will have throughout life. Therefore, in this literature review, the effectiveness of educational institutions will be appraised by employers. Under the employability strategies, the next section will detail the employability terms and initiatives which are carried out in business schools.
2.4.2 The Business School
Surveys such as that conducted by Green & Zhu (2010) show that since the 1950s the business school has been considered as the ablest higher educational institution which owns the most significant success stories on employability. As a result, there has been the growth of higher
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education institutions such as business schools (Khurana, 2007; Williams, 2010; Jackson et al., 2017). The literature review credits the success of business schools with a high demand for business services (Walker et al., 2015). However, the Business Council of Australia (2017) point out that employers are dissatisfied with the benchmark of experiences that graduates produced.
The researcher faced a dearth of data on the impact made on graduates of business schools (Gault et al., 2010). In their analysis, many researchers are concerned about the ethics, values, and models that business schools use in their training in business and management education (Green
& Zhu, 2010; Starkey et al., 2004; Tomlinson, 2012). These doubts have existed for ten years (Starkey & Tiratsoo, 2007). The shortage of academic investigations into business schools, despite their growth in popularity over the past decades, has been disturbing. They have cleared so far none of the numbers of doubts. To some extent, questions remained unanswered about the knowledge, skills, and readiness of business graduates who entered the labour market.
Tsukamoto (2016) focuses on how HEIs had inserted employability skills into the curricula of undergraduates to make better or more attractive students and to swell undergraduate employability in universities in the year 2000. HEIs, give due considerations to make the best means used when employability skills are inserted in the curriculum (OECD, 2016). Whether employability skills are imposed by add-on sessions or are skills inserted as an integral part of the curriculum is a continuous debate. Employability skills integrated into the curriculum on several modules will entail their delivery side by side with the academic skills (Barrie, 2006;
Tomlinson (2012). Some employers are agreed that HEIs are in favour of developing employability (Nankervis et al., 2018). Still, other employers felt that students would be unaware of the skills they were developing if ever the employability skills were to be inserted into the curriculum. Many employers argue that they can embed employability skills in the curriculum or as an add-on model (Mobd Salleh et al., 2016). Authors have published much literature on the choices of universities between integrating employability skills’ the adding on of skills, or both curriculum models (Prikshat et al., 2018; Shanmugam, 2017; Dhakal et al., 2018; World Bank, 2016). The staff of business schools show a lack of emotional involvement in teaching employability skills for the business professions (Gore & Carter, 2011; Walker et al., 2015).
Besides, some researchers also highlight the way staff prepares students for their courses (Cavanagh et al., 2015; Wibrow & Jackson. 2016). Such researchers put the competency of these staff into question on how they train graduates for the workplace. The issue raised here is that some academic personnel who work in business schools may lack a specific ability and knowledge of logistics. Staff lack practicality and concern with the user rather than theoretical
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possibilities of working in the business profession. Instead, business schools’ staff are concentrating more on teaching the theory. They do not satisfy employers with the academic learning side by side with the staff’s research (Salmi, 2017; Mehrotra, 2015).
Graduates must undertake internships to compensate for this inadequacy in some employability skills, that business staff have not taught them (Jackson, 2015). The work experience can be part of their degree programme (Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, 2007; Clarke, 2017). However, these internships are available in some subjects such as economics, business, management, and more. It is still more difficult to find placement in other subjects, for instance, Law, and Art and Design (Tsukamoto, 2016). There is a cost for starting and preserving the programme through the supervision of interns and keeping the employer’s relationship (Norton, 2016). Therefore, this can be one reason only a few HEIs offer work placements and internships, thus allowing students with more experience in the workplace (Tomlinson, 2017). HEIs have first to set up contacts with employers, gain placements and work experience opportunities, and make available these internships to students who have enrolled in their programme.
HEIs are interested in the professional development of graduates and with planning institutional strategies to help graduates’ passage from universities to work, for example, study programmes with internships. This sub-section has dealt with the employability skills and work experience opportunities which they mandated curricula extend to students. HEIs need to perpetuate an effective partnership with employers. An excellent collaborative partnership with providers of placements would benefit the interns. However, this section has also shown that obstacles to HEIs and companies continue.
So far this section had considered the literature about HEIs’ positions of a graduate’s employability. The following section will discuss the disregarded view in the graduate employability discourse, the graduates’ perspectives around internship and employability.