Graduate Employability and Student Attitudes and Orientations to the Labour Market

Michael Tomlinson

This article examines the way students, making the transition from higher education into the labour market, construct, understand and begin to manage their employability. It draws upon a qualitative study of 53 final year undergraduates in a pre-1992 university in the UK. It firstly explores students’ perceptions of the current labour market for graduates and how they understand future career progression. It examines their different orientations and attitudes to work and careers through the development of an ideal-type model. It then considers how these orientations influence the way students approach future work and careers and manage their employability, and further discusses some of the implications this has for current policies around higher education and the labour market in the UK context.

Introduction
This paper examines the perceptions, attitudes and orientations of higher education students to their future work, careers and employability. The employability of university graduates has dominated much educational and economic policy over the past decade (NCIHE, 1997; DfEE, 2000). Graduate employability is centrally located in the changing relationship between higher education and the labour market. The development of mass higher education has intersected with the shift towards a so-called knowledge-driven or post-industrial economy (Drucker, 1993; Amin, 1994). The knowledge-driven economy is said to require individuals with the types of knowledge, skill and creative potential who can meet the challenges of a global economy characterised by rapid change. Increasingly, individuals can no longer expect a ‘job for life’, whereby their careers are anchored around single jobs and organisations (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996; Gee et al, 1996). Employees instead