'Quality' in education is difficult to define. What is viewed as high quality by staff, students and employers must be identified so that universities can articulate their offer. Equally, helping students develop the graduate skills and attributes that employers value is essential. This project explored quality in higher education from the…

Using a sample of 15,741 graduates from the 2019 Korean Graduates Occupational Mobility National Survey, the study examines the effects of different types of vocational education, job skills-enhancing training and the quality management of university education on graduates employability. The results show that students' participation in internships…

Due to increasing demand for higher education around the world, concerns regarding the quality of education in higher education institutions have increased. The aim of this study was to determine perceptions of accreditation self-study coordinators and programme administrators on the influence of accreditation on academic quality. Data was…

Universities' reputations are built in part on graduates' assessments of the quality of education they received. What do these assessments tell us? Are graduates' judgments of quality based on their experiences as students or on their later job satisfaction, that is, on process or on outcomes? The objective of this study was to assess the extent…

The principal factors that influence satisfaction with a university are analyzed in this paper. A distinction is drawn for that purpose between the factors that intervene before, during, and after the phase of university education, at all times from a graduate perspective. A sample of 9380 interviews with graduates from three separate academic…

We study whether the completion of an optional professional year placement during undergraduate studies enhances job quality, in terms of earnings, job security and career fit, for economics graduates from a UK university. Using linear and discrete choice models, we estimate the effect of doing a professional year placement on four graduate…

Increasingly, universities prioritise employability as a primary purpose of personal and public investment into higher education and target graduate employability in their teaching, learning, assessment, and student support strategies. However, despite its emergence as a central concern in higher education, graduate employability lacks coherent…

The massification of higher education has dramatically changed the association between credentials and jobs in advanced countries, while its impacts in transitional economies have received less academic attention. To address this research lacuna, the paper utilizes rich information from China's national surveys of college graduates from 2003 to…

Secondary analysis of the UK's 2011/12 Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education survey reveals that many existing assumptions about graduate internships are questionable. This article proposes a reliable way of estimating the true extent of internships including those reported as 'voluntary' jobs: hidden internships. In doing so the article…

Universities are increasingly engaging with non-academic professionals in facilitating performance outcomes, reaffirming themselves as purposive organisations, i.e. institutions with the ability to organise strategically in the pursuit of goals and standards. However, there is little empirical evidence for the impact of professional staff on…

Malaysia has made significant progress in advancing access to education over the last two decades, having achieved the education goals of the UN's Millennium Development Goals. Unfortunately, this has not been accompanied by quality improvement, with reports of "unemployable" graduates a frequent refrain. This paper reports on a study of…

Using a unique European dataset for graduates, this paper examines the determinants of college satisfaction and investigates the relative importance of human capital, course composition, and subsequent employment outcomes. We find that aspects of the degree programme related to the mode of teaching and personal development were considerably more…

The aim of this paper is to identify key challenges facing Japan's higher education since the early 1990s and their impacts on major research themes. In this paper key challenges include those resulting from the decline in the 18-year population, the cultivation of high-quality university graduates, the incorporation of national universities, the…

This article aims to understand predictors of objective (i.e. job offers, employment status and employment quality) and subjective (i.e. perceived) graduate employability during university-to-work transitions. Using survey data from two cohorts of graduates in the UK (N = 293), it contrasts three competing theoretical approaches to employability:…

The university years are an important life phase for academics that shapes their transition from adolescence to adulthood. Here, we aimed to contribute to a better understanding on how alumni construe both nostalgic memories and regrets about this period. In line with Self-Determination Theory, we assumed that we would find frequent references to…