Graduate employability: Beyond the skills agenda

Although employability is high on the university agenda worldwide, there are no common ‘ingredients’ for it. Nonetheless, the dominant discourse of enhancing graduate employability in higher education still focuses on the skills agenda. This chapter challenges the accepted link between the skills agenda and graduate employability. It aims to forwards the message that the process of enhancing graduate employability should go beyond the instrumental approach of equipping students with the knowledge and skills employers require. Rather, student employment trajectory is complex, involved many factors, and higher education or the first employment is just the beginning of that trajectory. Universities should not only help their students develop their knowledge and skills, but also draw student awareness to the outside societal and labour market conditions and find the way to enhance not only student human capital (knowledge and skills) but also social capital (societal networking and understanding) and help students to prepare themselves to be more flexible and adaptable to the local and international working environment. It is also time for a more meaningful dialogue among governments, employers and universities to identify collaborated roles and responsibilities of each party in the process of enhancing graduate employability.