The diverse range of courses available and the particular issues they present surrounding employment might make a whole institution strategy to employability appear daunting. However, there are important employability principles that may be applied to any course or field while still allowing for an individual approach.
Employability begins on the first day of school, and pupils should be encouraged to view it as an intrinsic part of their education.
Every student matters – both from a student perspective of feeling like they have an individualised approach to employability and from a metric perspective – for example, in health-related courses, a drop of one student being recorded positively can have a significant impact on league table positions.
Students must take responsibility for their own employability, with academic help, in a genuine way that is important to them as people.
Employability is typically already embedded in the curriculum, therefore the problem is often extracting it and making it explicit rather than “embedding” it.
Employability is important and has an impact on all aspects of HEI operations, from admissions to teaching and learning to graduation and beyond, and collaboration between all stakeholders is necessary.
With the shifting work landscape, constant collaboration with employers is critical to ensure that students are aware of and able to adjust to changing conditions.
