Employability

Does your curriculum promote employability?

1. issues around discipline-specific knowledge, skills and attitudes
2. issues around skills and attitudes which are not discipline specific.

In both cases it is essential that students can identify and evidence the skills they have developed. Too many students fail to appreciate the skills they actually possess.
In recent years there has been some over-emphasis on the non-discipline specific skills. While it is true that students with good skills and attitudes in discipline non-specific areas will be employable in some jobs, they may NOT be employable within discipline-orientated jobs unless they ALSO have the appropriate discipline-specific knowledge, skills and attitudes. Even discipline non-specific employers will want to see that the student is academically able. The best transferable skills in the world count for nothing if students do not meet a required academic cut-off which may have been imposed by a particular employer as part of the requirements.

Discipline-specific knowledge, skills and attitudes

In terms of issues around discipline-specific knowledge, skills and attitudes, staff should be aware of developments within their discipline but it is helpful to have good relationships with discipline specific employers who can highlight any deficiencies in graduates. For example, 10 years ago pharmacology graduates were perceived by employers to be deficient in biotechnology and genetics knowledge and skills. Curricula in many universities then changed to include these aspects of pharmacology. Currently in vivo skills/aptitudes are in very short supply in graduates and initiatives by the pharmaceutical industry and the British Pharmacological Society are now addressing this directly. The Centre for Bioscience appointed Discipline Consultants to take a view on recent developments in their disciplines and their implications for curricula. Benchmarking statements and core curricula devised by, for example, learned societies (e.g. pharmacology) also address this issue.

Skills and attitudes which are not discipline specific

In terms of skills and attitudes which are not discipline specific then these can be addressed separately (e.g. as generic presentations courses, generic statistics courses and generic IT courses taken by students from any discipline) or can be taught within a discipline-specific context either as a separate module (designed and exemplified specifically for students of that discipline) or fully integrated into the discipline specific teaching material. Issues of available staff time, distribution of resources resulting from FTEs, integration within the timetable, and student perceptions of the teaching are important. All three approaches have their adherents.

The use of real-life scenarios and problem-based scenarios within the curriculum may help in the development of both discipline-specific and non-discipline specific requirements. The CONTEXT project provides a variety of such scenarios which can be used though currently few are set within a bioscience area. The AstraZeneca Teaching Day on Drug Development (details on the British Pharmacological Society website) provides such a resource in a drug development context. The Centre for Bioscience's Teaching Development Fund provides small project grants to help generate teaching materials. Such grants can be used to help teachers to develop real-life and problem-based scenarios within their curricula.

Of course, non-discipline specific, i.e. generic, skills can be developed outside the curriculum through work experience and spare time activities and achievements. For information and links see 'Are your students helped to steer their university experiences towards developing employability?'

Of possible further interest:

Meeting the Need 2001-2002 gives an account of several projects which explored ways of improving the responsiveness of HE curricula to employers needs.

The FDTL3 Realworld Project aimed to enhance employability of students within the disciplines of agriculture, environment, forestry and organismal biology through the integration of work-related learning activities into the curriculum

J.M. Hills, G. Robertson, R. Walker, M. Adey and I. Nixon 2003 'Bridging the Gap between Degree Program Curricula and Employability through Implementation of Work Related Learning'. Teaching in Higher Education, 8(2), 211–231.

Labour Market Information: A Guide
This guide has been produced primarily to aid the gathering and analysing of relevant labour market information, as part of the validation procedures for new courses and the subject review process for existing courses.

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