A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

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Teaching and
learning for
employability
Knowledge is not
the only outcome
Pauline Kneale
INTRODUCTION
Self-confident students who think about the processes they have gone through in higher
education, as well as the knowledge they have gained, should be more effective students
and researchers. From an entirely selfish point of view, happy, self-confident, employable
students are good for university business in the short and long term. Students who enter
the graduate job market and repay student loans at speed are more likely to look back and
think fondly of the academic elements of their university experience.
Graduate employment ought to be a powerful motivator of students seeking to reduce
debts by entering the graduate job market as speedily as possible. However, student
motivation to go to university careers services for support, physically or online, will be
low unless they are aware of the opportunities. Many students find term-time and
vacation jobs without too much effort, so obtaining employment after university is not
perceived as a hurdle. Urgency is generally low. ‘I will worry about a job when I’ve got
a 2.1.’ Academic tutors and careers staff are not always seen as necessarily the right people
to give advice as ’they don’t have graduate jobs’.
It is worth remembering that many students are motivated more by assessments than
by an intrinsic love of learning and spend time in the library because the curriculum is
cleverly designed to involve reading. Similarly, students are unlikely to engage with
teaching that focuses on their future employability in a deep learning manner without
there being a tangible and reasonably immediate benefit. Neither can they be expected
to divert to campus careers offices without significant carrots or sticks, especially if that
service is in an out-of-the-way location and lacking a coffee bar and comfortable chairs.
Without academic intervention and support, student awareness of employability and
careers services facilities is unlikely to increase. External pressures on academic staff to
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