Developing graduate employability through partnerships with industry and professional associations

This project explored stakeholder views on graduate employability, from a wide range of stakeholders, from a variety of disciplines.Practice in fields experiencing lower employment outcomes were investigated alongside fields with higher employment outcomes. One finding was that stakeholders from different disciplines had similar well developed conceptions of employability: there were relatively few discipline differences.

A second finding was that the simplicity or sophistication of student perceptions of employability depended on the pedagogical approach of their discipline program, as well as whether they had discipline relevant work experience. This project developed a framework that maps the key influences on graduate employability as experienced by students, graduates, employers, employer representatives and teachers. Areas of existing good practice and opportunities for innovation were identified.

The findings are available in the form of a framework, short stories of good practice, journal and conference papers, outlined in a final report to the OLT. This will be available from the OLT website www.olt.gov.au in 2015.