Higher education institutions need to align themselves more closely with the needs of businesses and equip students with the skills and experience necessary to make them more successful and value-adding employees. This paper explores undergraduate student perceptions of the effectiveness of the case study teaching and learning method in the…

As we continue into the new millennium, it is imperative that educational institutions equip graduates with the knowledge and skills that are increasingly needed and valued by business and industry. In this article, the authors argue that the case study approach and, specifically, case study competitions constitute an ideal pedagogical strategy…

The Department of Electronics of the Technological Educational Institute of Crete (DoE/TEI Crete) enjoys good approval ratings from the market and its graduates have a high rate of employability. However, survey data collected over the last ten years from graduates and from the enterprises in which they have been employed, or have carried out…

Employment of agriculture graduates in Iran is a major problem that needs to be addressed. There are three main issues: lack of robust strategies for linking agricultural higher education and the labour market, the lack of relevance of agricultural curricula to the real needs of the labour market, and diminishing levels of government services for…

This paper discusses the experience of UK doctoral graduates in pursuing entrepreneurial careers: there is evidence that this applies to a substantial number--about 10%--of doctoral graduates. The nature of their experience was explored using 37 interviews with doctoral entrepreneurs. The research was funded by Vitae (www.vitae.ac.uk), an…

Providing graduates with a set of skills and attributes relevant to their future employment remains a key topic in both higher education policy and research. This paper reports findings from a pilot study of human resource management (HRM) students' perceptions of the graduate work experience. Specifically, it focuses on how these perceptions are…

This paper explores the views that students and employers have on innovative work-based learning (WBL) programmes in English higher education. The experiences of both students and employers were analysed methodologically, using the organizational story-telling framework (Gabriel, 1999). The themes that have emerged are learning support,…

Concern exists among both academics and employers regarding the quality of graduates' writing. The complaint, as it is most commonly phrased, is that young graduates can no longer "string a simple sentence together". If true, this is a problem: the quality of students' writing seriously affects their chances in the job market. In this small-scale…

This paper outlines an action research project developed to investigate the gap in teaching and learning placement materials available to students, academics and practitioners in the art, design and media sector, particularly with respect to micro-businesses. Previous research, funded by the UK's Higher Education Subject Centre for Art Design…

Enterprise education at Newcastle University, UK, is embedded in the fabric of the curriculum via the Newcastle University Graduate Skills Framework. An example of this is the "Business for the Bioscientist" module. The authors discuss this module with regard to good practice, enterprise development and the wider arena of graduate careers and…

The pedagogy relevant to work-integrated learning (WIL) has formed a significant component of most educational processes and has become a necessity for the public relations industry in South Africa. Properly planned, designed and monitored programmes expose students to professional culture and workplace practice. This paper outlines the pedagogy…

The main purpose of the exploratory research discussed in this paper was to generate insights into the complexity of the career-making processes involved in the transition from being a student to starting up a business. Using story-telling interviews, data were collected from fifteen graduates based in the Yorkshire region of the UK. Qualitative…

Fundamental changes in how economies function and how organizations are structured and managed in a global environment have created a new imperative for enterprise education. Higher education has to concern itself with appropriate and effective programmes that develop enterprising graduates in an endeavour to drive forward a knowledge-based…

This paper focuses on factors that influence the appropriateness of entrepreneurship studies to the needs and expectations of management students in Israel, where entrepreneurs are considered cultural heroes. The results of the authors' research revealed great interest in entrepreneurship studies among most of the students surveyed. However,…

This article provides an analysis of job supply by Spanish firms and the demand for work, and the mismatch that occurs between these two variables. Data are taken for the year 2006, with particular attention to jobs offered by firms that require people with university degrees or other higher education qualifications. Demand and supply are broken…