Why knowledge is central to ‘graduateness’ : Implications for research and policy

Ashwin, Paul (2024) Why knowledge is central to ‘graduateness’ : Implications for research and policy. Policy Reviews in Higher Education. ISSN 2332-2969

Abstract

Debates about the employability of graduates in policy and research have increasingly focused on graduates’ employment outcomes and the development of generic employability skills. This suggests that the knowledge that students engage with in their degrees is far less important than the generic attributes they develop, which promotes a knowledge-blind conception of ‘graduateness’. This article draws on data from a seven-year longitudinal study of students who studied chemistry and chemical engineering in England, South Africa and the USA, following them up to four years after graduation. Graduates’ reflections on the most important things they gained from their degree centred on the knowledge they engaged in as part of their undergraduate degree and how this shaped their way of engaging with the world. This has two important implications. First, it highlights the ways in which the focus on generic employability and employment outcomes obscures the way in which ‘graduateness’ depends on the relations to knowledge that graduates have developed through their studies. Second, this means that focusing on graduate outcomes without taking account of these relations to knowledge provides policymakers, institutional leaders and prospective students with a profoundly misleading account of the educational outcomes of undergraduate degrees