Advancing Student Employability Through Higher Education

The global skills gap and labor market disruptions pose a significant challenge for organizations worldwide. Higher education struggles to bridge the mismatch between skills taught in academia and those demanded by employers, hindering organizations in an era of heightened competition. Advancing Student Employability Through Higher Education offers a comprehensive solution to address this issue. Edited by Bryan Christiansen and Angela Even, this publication brings together innovative research and insights from employers and employees, serving as a valuable resource for academic scholars seeking the latest research on employer requirements in an era of increasing global hyper-competition. Covering topics like industry-academia collaboration, educational innovation, learning analytics, and educational artificial intelligence (AI), the book provides practical strategies and innovative approaches to bridge the gap between academic instruction and real-world organizational needs. It equips students with the skills and qualifications necessary to thrive in today's global economy through case studies, online learning effectiveness, and training evaluation. By leveraging the expertise of renowned scholars and industry practitioners, the book enhances understanding of the intricate dynamics of the workforce. It empowers scholars, graduate students, and higher education professionals to navigate the evolving needs of organizations, fostering success for individuals and organizational growth in an increasingly competitive landscape.

Anyone with a responsibility for curriculum development or policy making within higher education who wants to advance learning and promote employability amongst their students will find this book absolutely essential reading.

This book explores how international undergraduate and graduate students navigate their higher educational institutional (HEI) experiences and employability prospects in both Global North and Global South universities. The chapter authors examine how students from the Global South use their agency to apply their HEI experiences to meet their needs, gain skills, and envision alternative pathways to adapt to economic, environmental, and political changes. Through diverse student voices, the book sheds light on the challenges faced by these international students in the job market. It highlights the importance of promoting diversity and equity in higher education. The book emphasizes the need to consider the cultural circumstances of global south students to enhance their employability. The book contributes to a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities faced by Global South international students in the job market. It offers effective strategies for educators, policymakers, and employers to support these students.

In this book, we explore the socio-political environment that impacts international students’ employability and discuss student experiences of employability development during and after their studies. The book also aims to provide a holistic understanding of international student employability on a global scale, incorporating various higher education contexts, including the US, UK, Netherlands, Vietnam, and Japan. This book includes both conceptualizations of international students who participate in “internationalization abroad” through physically crossing the border and those who participate in “internationalization at home’’. The COVID-19 pandemic has potentially transformed international education as many international students were forced to stay in their home countries and resort to online education. The book looks into the bigger questions: How do the institutions of higher education expand programs and resources for international students and their employability? Is the internationalization at home model going to be increasingly popular in the post-pandemic world? Will employers be receptive to international graduates globally? Editors Xin Zhao (Skye) is a university teacher in the Information School at the University of Sheffield (UK) and a senior fellow of HEA. E-mail: [email protected] Michael Kung is the Director of Global Education and the Program Director for the Sustainable Design Master’s program in the College of Design, Construction, and Planning at the University of Florida (USA). E-mail: [email protected] Krishna Bista is Vice President of the STAR Scholars Network and a Professor of Higher Education in the Department of Advanced Studies, Leadership and Policy at Morgan State University, Maryland (USA). E-mail: [email protected] Yingyi Ma is a Professor of Sociology, Provost Faculty Fellow, and the Director of Asian/Asian American Studies at Syracuse University, New York (USA). E-mail: [email protected]

In the throes of a global skills gap and relentless labor market disruptions, organizations grapple with the pressing challenge of aligning workforce skills with the demands of a hypercompetitive economy. Reports from influential entities like the World Economic Forum and McKinsey & Company underscore the urgency for strategic interventions to bridge this divide. Despite the pivotal role of higher education and corporate training, recent findings from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reveal a persistent struggle in finding candidates equipped with the requisite skills for a multitude of available jobs. The deficiencies span from foundational communication skills to complex problem-solving abilities, posing a formidable hurdle for organizations seeking qualified talent. Prioritizing Skills Development for Student Employability emerges as a solution to the skills misalignment conundrum by delving into the heart of the issue, dissecting the intricacies of global workforce dynamics, education-industry collaborations, and the evolving landscape of corporate training. By exploring topics such as learning analytics, educational artificial intelligence (AI), and effective leadership in the context of present-day human resource management, the book provides a comprehensive roadmap for both academic scholars and professionals to navigate the complex terrain of skills development.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the teaching-learning experience dramatically, creating an opportunity for new online and blended learning techniques and tools. This has also added a new dimension to practices and methods already adopted for achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) within education. This requires a new paradigm shift in the teaching-learning process through the systemic and pragmatic assessment of student learning outcomes so that employability skills and competence can be developed in students for competing at the global level. Development of Employability Skills Through Pragmatic Assessment of Student Learning Outcomes discusses the best practices in the assessment of student learning objectives (SLOs), the mapping of SLOs, and the ways of developing employability skills in young minds so that SDGs may be achieved. It elaborates the theory, practice, and importance of developing employability skills through research-based learning. Covering topics such as graduate employability, outcome-based education, and technical undergraduate programs, this premier reference source is an essential resource for employers, libraries, students and educators of higher education, faculty and administration of higher education, pre-service teachers, government organizations, business leaders and managers, human resource managers, researchers, and academicians.

What does higher education offer to make students competent actors in the world of work and other life spheres? This issue is most controversially debated in economically advanced countries since about four decades when higher education in economically advanced countries began to serve larger ranges of the occupational pyramid than merely the intellectually and professionally chosen few. The author of this volume analyzes a broad range of issues over four decades of his academic career. Employers’ and graduate surveys, secondary analyses of education and employment statistics as well as analyses of policy and academic debates form the basis of the key argument: Neither trust in expectations formulated by employers or in income and status as measures of successful study nor isolated claims for the pursuit of academic knowledge for its own sake and for the critical functions of higher education are a suitable reference frame for understanding the dynamic links between higher education and the world of work. A “match” between the number of graduates and the corresponding positions or between the competences acquired during study and job requirements cannot be expected. Students are more ambitious and strive for a broader range of goals than they can expect to be rewarded. Graduates have to be both highly qualified experts and sceptics as far as conventional wisdom is concerned, and they have to be prepared for indeterminate tasks. Key themes of this collection of essays are: the causes and consequences of an imperfect “match” between higher education and employment; the tensions between “employment” and “work” orientation in higher education; opportunities of a “highly educated society”; the dynamics of the variety of students, the patterns of the higher education system and the horizontal and vertical diversity of careers; different notions of higher education and the world of work among economically advanced countries; major controversial notions of professional relevance of study in policy and research debates.

Higher Education and Employability makes a crucial contribution to the current reassessment of higher education in the United States by focusing on how colleges and universities can collaborate with businesses in order to serve the educational and professional interests of their students. Drawing on his extensive experience with universities and the business world, Peter J. Stokes argues that the need for closer alignment between the two sectors has never been more critical—and that the opportunities for partnership have never been greater. This book includes a series of trenchant case studies of particular universities that have developed ambitious collaborative programs—New York University, Northeastern University, and the Georgia Institute of Technology. Incisive and practical, this book surveys the full range of current partnerships between businesses and higher education and points to opportunities that will best serve students now and in the future.