Title:
Exploring how international graduates develop employability capital to navigate labour market: International graduates in Australia
Presenters:
Melody Tang, PhD student, Faculty of Education, Monash University, Clayton, Australia
Email: mengni.tang@monash.edu
Abstract:
Graduate employability is now a significant issue worldwide. University students invest heavily in higher education and expect a return on this educational investment, the governments use graduates’ employment outcome to measure the teaching quality of curricula and to grant funding, and employers expect work-ready graduates. Therefore, universities are under pressure to produce employable graduates. It has been found that graduate employability is determined by human (professional knowledge, professional skills), cultural (cultural understanding of labour markets), social (professional networks), identity (career aspiration), psychological (resilience, flexibility and adaptability), and agentic capital (the capacity to interlink various forms of capital). However, little is known about how international graduates develop and utilise capital to navigate the labour market in the host country. This research aims to explore how various forms of capital determine international graduates’ employability outcomes in Australia, so as to provide Australian higher education with insights in teaching quality to prepare international graduates’ education-to-work transitions.
Keywords:
Higher Education, Graduates Employability, Capital
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