Reconsidering Graduate Employability: Beyond Possessive Instrumentalism Dr Leonard Holmes Principal Lecturer in Human Resource Management The Business School, University of Bedfordshire Putteridge Bury Campus, Hitchin Road, Luton LU2 8LE, UK Email: len.holmes@beds.ac.uk Website: http://www.reskill.org.uk Presented at the Seventh International Conference on HRD Research and Practice Across Europe, University of Tilburg, 2224 May, 2006 Introduction: the importance of graduate employability Like other advanced industrial nations, the United Kingdom has over recent years placed greater emphasis on raising educational levels of its populace, particularly in terms of increasing the proportion of young persons in the workforce who are university graduates. Within an increasingly competitive globalised economy, the basis of any nation’s strategies for sustainable prosperity relies ever more upon human capital and thus the forms of work that its economicallyactive citizens are able to undertake (Reich, 1992). Recognition of this, and a concern for equity in opportunity for social and economic advancement within the population, has informed recent UK Government policy on higher education, which itself is framed within a commitment to fiscal prudence (National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education, 1997; Department for Education and Skills, 2003). At the same time, individuals are encouraged to undertake higher education because, in part, there is a significant earnings premium that graduates gain, on average, over their working lifetime (Steel and Sausman, 1997). Recognition of the limited call that can be made on public funds, from general taxation revenues, has led to new financing regime for the expansion of higher education premised on the principle that graduates should contribute to the costs incurred in their higher education, through a repayment scheme based on postgraduation earnings. The state, as the major funder of higher education, out of taxation income, has a significant interest in issues concerning how higher education can, indeed, promote the likelihood that students emerging from higher education gain desirable forms of postgraduation employment, contributing to national prosperity. Those students/ graduate also have a significant interest in gaining such employment, to fund the repayment of part of the costs of their education and for personal prosperity. Whilst, in a market economy, no graduate can be guaranteed employment, there is general consensus amongst policymakers and a general expectation amongst entrants to and participants in higher education, that such education can and should promote graduate employability.