In these complex and challenging times, students, teachers and employers are all interested in the development of generic abilities as these typically make the difference between good and indifferent employees, successful and unsuccessful learners. This book explains why generic capacities have become so important and argues that the process of acquiring them is both lifelong and developmental.
We all know that higher education has changed dramatically over the past two decades. Historically a time of exploration and self-discovery, the college years have been narrowed toward an increasingly singular goal—career training—and college students these days forgo the big questions about who they are and how they can change the world and instead focus single-mindedly on their economic survival. In The Purposeful Graduate, Tim Clydesdale elucidates just what a tremendous loss this is, for our youth, our universities, and our future as a society. At the same time, he shows that it doesn’t have to be this way: higher education can retain its higher cultural role, and students with a true sense of purpose—of personal, cultural, and intellectual value that cannot be measured by a wage—can be streaming out of every one of its institutions. The key, he argues, is simple: direct, systematic, and creative programs that engage undergraduates on the question of purpose. Backing up his argument with rich data from a Lilly Endowment grant that funded such programs on eighty-eight different campuses, he shows that thoughtful engagement of the notion of vocational calling by students, faculty, and staff can bring rich rewards for all those involved: greater intellectual development, more robust community involvement, and a more proactive approach to lifelong goals. Nearly every institution he examines—from internationally acclaimed research universities to small liberal arts colleges—is a success story, each designing and implementing its own program, that provides students with deep resources that help them to launch flourishing lives. Flying in the face of the pessimistic forecast of higher education’s emaciated future, Clydesdale offers a profoundly rich alternative, one that can be achieved if we simply muster the courage to talk with students about who they are and what they are meant to do.
This book is an inspirational collection of quotes an Scripture that will motivate graduates from high school and college to live meaningful, productive and happy life while inspiring them to strive for excellence and character in living.
This book explores stakeholders’ perspectives, their practices, and engagement with enacting the employability agenda in the context of a rapidly changing world. It explains the need for developing graduate employability under socioeconomic, cultural, and political pressure exposed to the higher education sector. Largely framed within Bourdieu’s concepts of social field, habitus, and capital, it explores international stakeholders’ perspectives and experiences with graduate employability agenda in different contexts, which serves as a point of reference for the adoption of such initiatives. Based on empirical evidence, the authors develop a new graduate employability framework seeing it as a lifelong process, denote the relationships between types of employability capital, and shed light on the consequences of different strategies to translate employability capital to employment and career outcomes. Overall, this book generates both theoretical and practical insights which help to advance employability programs, better prepare the future workforce, and anticipate turbulence in the labour markets.
The worldwide marketization of higher education has resulted in a growing pressure on universities’ accountability, particularly in terms of more tangible learning outcomes directly related to paying higher tuition fees. Covering globally diverse perspectives, Innovate Higher Education to Enhance Graduate Employability uses a range of international case studies to help practitioners and researchers review, reflect on and refresh their ability to bridge the gap between university and industry. A timely response to the need to improve the quality of higher education in order to build work readiness in students, this book: Adds a critical, global dimension to this topical area in higher education as well as society’s concerns Provides a number of practice-based case studies on how universities can transform their programmes to enhance graduate employability Acts as a source of practical suggestions for how to improve students' sufficient employability including their skills, knowledge and attitudes Provides insights from theory, practices and policy perspectives. A crucial read for anyone looking to engage with the global issue of graduate employability, Innovate Higher Education to Enhance Graduate Employability covers both theoretical frameworks and practical models through an exploration of how universities around the world are using innovative techniques to enhance employability.
