From graduate employability to employment: policy and practice in UK higher education

© 2017 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. The purpose of this paper is to enrich the current conceptualization of graduate employability and employment through the lens of policy, academia and practice in UK higher education. We examine the UK policy context that is shaping graduate employability and employment debates before enriching this conceptualization through a discussion of key themes in the academic literature. We then undertake a comparative study across a sample of 35 higher education institutions in the UK to identify and discuss key employability practice areas shaping their graduate employability and employment provision. We do so by drawing on institutional employability data that is already available in the public domain. In mapping key themes in the literature against institutional employability practice, we conclude that the employer-university interaction theme in the literature is not sufficiently addressed in UK higher education practice. Drawing on the evidence from our comparative study, we provide a discussion on four directions worthy of further exploration by universities as they shape their institutional responses to the lack of employer-university interaction.