‘Rethinking the links between qualifications and the labour market – why new conceptual models are needed’

Date: Monday 09 November 2015

Location: Senate Hall, First Floor, Administration Building, Bellville Campus (09:00 – 14:30)

The ‘mismatch’ between qualifications and jobs is very high and most graduates do not end up working in occupations directly associated with their qualification. This has led to calls for tighter links between qualifications and occupations by further specifying the outcomes of qualifications. However, this is to misunderstand the links between qualifications and the labour market and the way employers use qualifications as a selection mechanism. Attempting to tighten links even further would in the end curtail the options open to graduates, and undermine their preparation for the labour market and as contributing citizens.

This topic is particularly important for universities of technology because of the vocational orientation of their provision. They have to confront the question – what does it mean to prepare students for work when the links between qualifications and occupations are so weak?

This presentation will draw on recent research by Wheelahan and her colleagues in Australia and Canada to:

• Problematise current conceptions of the links between qualifications and occupations and educational pathways. In particular, it will demonstrate that policy objectives to construct linear pathways that link lower and higher level qualifications within the same field of study needs to be reconsidered by developing more nuanced and differentiated approaches to educational pathways;
• Argue that there are three key purposes of qualifications, which are to: prepare graduates to enter or progress in the labour market; move to higher level studies within the same field; support social inclusion and social mobility by providing opportunities for students from disadvantaged backgrounds to participate in tertiary education;
• Consider the nature of the ‘transition systems’ that mediate students’ transitions between education and the labour market. It will compare and contrast liberal market economies such as Canada, Australia and South Africa on the one hand, and coordinated market economies like Germany on the other, to demonstrate how the different transition systems allocate graduates to occupations. It will, as part of this discussion, consider the impact that ‘skills ecosystems’ within nations have on the demand for qualifications and labour by distinguishing between regulated and unregulated occupations;
• Argue that we need to think more broadly about preparing students for work, and the way in which the labour market elicits demands for qualifications by using the concepts of vocations and vocational streams. The premise is that instead of preparing people for specific occupations, we should instead prepare them for ‘vocational streams’, which consists of occupations that share common knowledge, skills and attributes (for example, care work, instead of disability care, aged care, mental health care occupations). A ‘vocation’ refers to a domain of practice that shares knowledge skills and attributes, whereas vocational streams refers to the structure of occupations that share knowledge, skills and attributes; and,
• Conclude by considering the implications for curriculum and qualifications.