Diagnosing Higher Education on Purposefulness: Introducing the Employability Development and Assessment Maturity Model (
Employability has been on the political agenda for over two decades. The role of Higher Education (HE) in the development of employability in its learners is undeniably pertinent and with that, the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)’ ability to offer an
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Abstract Employability has been on the political agenda for over two decades. The role of Higher Education (HE) in the development of employability in its learners is undeniably pertinent and with that, the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)’ ability to offer an effective developmental process in this regard shapes the current competitive climate in HE. Be it at various levels of priority, employability has furthermore emerged as a formal indicator of quality assurance in national and international accreditation frameworks for HE. Aside from their evaluative purpose, such frameworks also aspire to nurture and support a spirit of continuous improvement to the benefit of the institution, its learners and the larger society they are part of. Even though there is an abundance of literature around employability and HE which indicates the value of a holistic view and subsequent institutional address, this must be advanced to the development of practical tools that address such a holistic approach. A mechanism that simultaneously allows for diagnosing the effectiveness of the developmental process and serves as a pathway for improvement is up to date lacking. Given the importance of employability as a strategic goal for sustainable HE, the formulation of such mechanism is timely. This paper presents the current state of development of a maturity model on how HEIs can tackle employability, viewing this construct from a holistic lens. The paper will also outline future steps in order to further validate the model towards a highly robust quality assurance tool for HE.
P. Vande Wiele (&) Bahrain Polytechnic, Business School, Isa Town, Bahrain e-mail: [email protected] P. Vande Wiele PhDKIM, Bangkok University, Bangkok, Thailand V. Ribiere IKI-SEA, Bangkok University, Bangkok, Thailand J.-L. Ermine Telecom Business School Sudparis, Evry, France © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 G.B. Teh and S.C. Choy (eds.), Empowering 21st Century Learners Through Holistic and Enterprising Learning, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4241-6_18
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Keywords Employability assurance
P. Vande Wiele et al.
Higher education
Maturity model
Quality
Introduction In the light of the new economic and societal realities of the twenty-first century against the backdrop of the emergence of the knowledge economy and the knowledge society, employability has become a major item on the national and supranational political agenda around the world (Oliver 2011, 2015). Additionally, economic and societal trends of globalization, increased mobility of labour and increased access to education have resulted in changed career perspectives whereby the onus has shifted to the individual in terms of career-management (Sook et al. 2012). The emergence of the knowledge economy in particular has reignited a debate that has been latent since the 1960s around how well HEIs’ perform in their contribution to the development of the required human capital for societal and economic progress. Even though acknowledged as an issue for decades, the
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