The World of Work Is Changing, And Universities Must Change Too
Universities in England and Wales have every reason to ponder the future of work. Each one of them has to display the graduate employment rate and the average starting salary six months after graduation as part of the Key Information Set that now appears on the web page of each undergraduate degree programme. Furthermore, extending this to taught postgraduate programmes can’t be ruled out in the not-too-distant future. Those thinking of applying for university, on the other hand, will be keen to see encouraging evidence of a programme’s ability to enhance their graduate earning potential and thereby to increase their chances – as graduates – of being able to make their monthly tuition fee and maintenance loan repayments and have something left to enable them to lead a comfortable life. In short, graduate employability is now a key performance indicator that is likely to keep many a Vice Chancellor awake at night, when they must ask themselves not only whether their respective university has an effective careers service, but also whether enough is being done to align the student experience to changes in the world of work. Of course, this suggests the advisability of greater engagement with the students themselves.
Students are being led by public perception to believe that they are now the consumers of higher education, because they have to pay top dollar for it
The catch is that these same students are being led by public perception to believe that they are now the consumers of higher education, because they have to pay top dollar for it, and the danger of this is that it fosters a feeling of entitlement and a passive approach to the learning process. However, the competitive, rapidly and capriciously changing world of work will increasingly be looking for evidence of proactivity, adaptability and flexibility in final-year students aspiring to become gainfully employed.
Universities should therefore be encouraging undergraduates to contribute actively to their programme of study, for instance by building in the opportunity for demonstrating initiative, e.g. through research-based projects, collaborative work with academics, and by acting as programme representatives, members of departmental and faculty boards.
They should be maximizing the opportunities for internships and paid work placements and putting in place support mechanisms to enable students to compete successfully for them.
They should be capturing and formally recognizing all the evidence of each student’s part-time employment, voluntary activities in the community, student society participation, and involvement in employability workshops, as a guide to prospective employers.
And they should be engaging with employers, by encouraging academic departments other than business and law schools to have advisory boards through which the employers’ voice may be heard.
There are already signs that some universities have got the message. For instance, the University of Lincoln has introduced a “Lincoln Award” that enables students to register the range of personal activities referred to above, which in turn incentivizes the same, and this particular university rejects the notion of the student as consumer by espousing the principle of the Student as Producer, which is synonymous with being a co-producer of knowledge by means of research-based projects and the opportunity to publish findings. The same university has the UK’s first student chapter of the Chartered Management Institute, which has enabled the business school, through its own students, to set up a programme involving employers in the mentoring of undergraduates.
So many universities are still not paying enough attention to the world of work that their students will be entering
That’s the good news. Unfortunately, the competition between universities has the effect of making their key aspiration to be more like the universities above them in the rankings, and this invariably fosters copycat ambitions and reduces the will to be distinctive. Moreover, it focuses attention on other institutions, would-be competitors, rather than on what helps the aspiring institution be different, be innovative, and be fit for a distinctive purpose that is compatible with its expertise and enhances the competitiveness of its graduates in the employment market. It explains why so many universities are still not paying enough attention to the world of work that their students will be entering and to how they may best prepare their students for this experience and the employment challenges that await them. Witness, for instance, the way UK universities have allowed foreign language learning opportunities to atrophy in the context of a home jobs market that now extends across the twenty eight member states of the European Union. Once one university started to rationalize in this subject area, it was just a matter of time before the rest followed like sheep, and in no cases was the impact on graduates’ employability taken into consideration.
If UK universities, or at least universities in England and Wales, are to prepare students properly for the rapidly evolving world of work, they must not only engage more effectively with students and with employers, but in each instance also focus more on the changing nature of employment itself, testing the institutional ethos and offer against the employment market’s expectations of the institution as a producer of graduates. In other words, it is in the interest of students as aspiring employees for each university to develop responsiveness to the world of work and in so doing to be prepared to be innovative and distinctive rather than to be preoccupied with slavishly adopting the practices of higher ranked institutions.
This is a guest post by David Head (@DavidHeadViews), former Dean of Business & Law and Director of Innovative Partnerships at the University of Lincoln. He now works as an education consultant.
