This guide considers the issue of employability from the perspective of part-time students
on undergraduate programmes. It builds on other guides in this series – in particular
Embedding employability into the curriculum. That publication took as its starting point that
‘the complexity of employability and the variety that exists in curricula in UK higher
education mean that no single, ideal, prescription for the embedding of employability can
be provided.’ (Yorke and Knight, 2004, p.2).

 

It is of course the case that, in many higher education institutions, part-time students are
taught alongside full-time students, the only difference being the rate at which they
complete modules and accumulate credit points. So one might wonder why, if we are
looking to embed employability into a curriculum that is delivered on the same basis to
full-time and part-time students, we need to consider part-time students and employability
as a separate issue.
Moreover, part-time students will for the most part already be employed (on a full- or parttime
basis) and one might argue that employability is thus less of an issue for such
students. This would, however, imply a rather narrow view of employability as ‘just getting
a job on graduation’. Part-time students may well be looking to gain career advancement
within (or outside of) their current employment situation as a result of their higher
education experiences, or to move into a different occupation altogether. Such
considerations may well affect how they engage with the taught curriculum in terms of
developing both subject specific expertise and more general personal attributes. Part-time
students’ access to, and engagement with, co-and extra-curricular activities might also
contribute to their employability.

Publisher: The Higher Education Academy
Type: Guide
ISBN/ISSN: 1-904190-81-2