Enhancing graduate employability and the need for university-enterprise collaboration

Abstract

Over the last few decades there has been strong debate over the central mission of higher education and resistance to the employability agenda seemed strong. However, with the changing context of both higher education and the labour market, together with neoliberal pressure, enhancing graduate employability has become one of the central focuses in many universities worldwide. This article provides an overview of the relevant literature to resonate with why graduate employability has been more popularly presented in many university practices. The notion of graduate employability is examined and it is argued that without input from and collaboration with industry, universities are hardly able to achieve their vocational mission of equipping their students for the labour market.

Keywords

• graduate employability, higher education, labour market, university-enterprise collaboration