Firms shift towards wanting ‘work-ready’ graduates

An increasing number of firms worldwide are seeing the purpose of university as ensuring that graduates are “job-ready” when they leave higher education, an annual survey of employers has suggested.

About half of graduate recruiters also plan to invest more in their own internal training programmes to ensure that graduates have the skills needed for the workplace, results from the 2020 Global University Employability Survey show.

The survey, now in its 10th year and produced by Paris-based HR consultancy Emerging, gathered responses from almost 9,000 graduate recruiters worldwide on a series of issues, including their views on the top universities for employability.

It suggests that the past decade has seen a shift in attitudes among companies towards higher education, with 28 per cent of respondents to the 2020 survey believing the purpose of university was to produce “ready-to-work” graduates, up from just 8 per cent a decade ago.

Similarly, the proportion of recruiters saying that they saw university as a place that was “mainly focused on theoretical skills” has dropped from about a third to 13 per cent.

Laurent Dupasquier, associate director of Emerging, said he had seen a noticeable “redefinition” of employability inside universities in recent years from a one-dimensional focus on “CV writing” and helping graduates to get a job to working more closely with firms on equipping students with the right skills.

This was arguably backed up by the results of the Global University Employability Ranking, in which systems with traditionally close links between higher education and industry, such as Germany and South Korea, have risen steadily.

“All in all, what we see is how the relationship with industry has intensified, and it is obviously the countries that have had systems like that for a long time that are doing well in the ranking,” Mr Dupasquier said.

Sandrine Belloc, managing partner at Emerging, added that countries with developing systems were also establishing strong university-business partnerships because they had been able to focus “on something that looked easier to them” than the decades of work that might be needed to build a large research-based higher education system.

Mr Dupasquier said the risk for universities that did not engage closely with industry – such as through course design or professionally validated qualifications – was that firms themselves could become competitors.

Results from the survey suggest that while 51 per cent of recruiters said they thought their firm should invest more in university partnerships to aid graduate employability, 49 per cent said pouring money into internal qualification programmes would be preferable.

“Digitalisation has gone so fast and is so disruptive that it…offers space for companies to move [into education] themselves. And I would say it could happen first in systems that are not so geared towards employability like the UK and the US. I would imagine companies there could become competitors to universities,” Mr Dupasquier said.

He added that the pandemic would also accelerate some of these trends, with the survey showing that 82 per cent of recruiters wanted to see more collaboration with universities to “develop significantly new digital training formats” as a result of the Covid-19 crisis.

Joe Marshall, chief executive of the UK’s National Centre for Universities and Business, said higher tuition fees and increased student numbers across most of the country have “led to an increased focus on providing graduates with the skills they need for a wider range of careers”.

There were also plenty of signs that universities were working more closely with firms on elements that affected employability such as course design and work placements.

This had ramped up during the pandemic, he said, although he thought the government could “take more of a lead” in encouraging more collaboration between the sectors.

“We have recently called for the establishment of an independent body to analyse current and future skills needs of the UK and to develop a joined-up strategy to ensure that education providers are providing the skills needed for the labour market,” Dr Marshall said.

simon.baker@timeshighereducation.com

Global University Employability Ranking 2020

Source: Global University Employability Ranking © Emerging

How countries have fared in the ranking – 2020 v 2010

Source: Global University Employability Ranking © Emerging. Note: Country rank determined by points total in each edition of the GUER