Resources

Enhancing student employability is a key priority for higher education. The Dearing Report on Higher Education (1997) and the Leitch Report (2006) on skills both emphasised the importance of education for employability.

Government and employers are looking for an increased supply of graduates capable of making an effective contribution to the nation's economic welfare, and students increasingly expect to acquire skills to enhance their employability in a competitive and rapidly changing labour market.

Employability is difficult to define - it is a multi-dimensional concept, but essentially it is concerned with good student learning. The Enhancing Student Employability Skills Co-ordination Team (ESECT) define employability as:

"A set of achievements - skills, understandings and personal attributes - that make graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations, which benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy."

Further Information

Higher Education Academy
An extensive range of resources are available from the ‘supporting learning' section of the Higher Education Academy website. These include a range of publications in the Learning and Employability Series, tools and exercises that can be used with students, and links to other websites and organisations.

Enhancement Themes
Employability was one of the 2004/05 Enhancement Themes in Scotland and resources relating to this work are available from the Enhancement Themes website.

HLST
The HLST Network in conjunction with the BMAF Subject Centre published a book on Enhancing Graduate Employability in their ‘Enhancing Series'. This contains case study examples of embedding employability within the curriculum.

Student Employability Profiles
The Council for Industry and Higher Education (CIHE) and the Higher Education Academy launched a series of Student Employability Profiles in 2006 for all degree programmes, aimed to help academic staff, employers and students to understand better the skills developed through the study of a particular subject.

HLST resources

HLST: Adding Value for Employability
This project was produced in 2003/04 and aims to help hospitality students to reflect on and gain academic credit for their employment experience.

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