This article draws on a longitudinal qualitative study of graduate transitions from higher education programmes to the world of work. In the study, 23 physicians and 20 master's level engineers in information technology, recently graduated from four different universities in Sweden, were interviewed. The aim of this article is to explore the…

This paper discusses the findings from a one-year ethnographic study of young people attending Entry to Employment (E2E) programmes in two local authorities in the north of England. The paper locates E2E within the broader context of provision for low-achieving young people and of UK government policy on reducing the proportion of young people who…

This paper argues that we have a theory--namely, opportunity structure theory--which can account for how school-to-work transitions were accomplished "then" and "now", and also why "now" is different from "then". Opportunity structures are formed primarily by the inter-relationships between family backgrounds, education, labour market processes…

There is substantial evidence that formal educational attainments increasingly exceed the educational job requirements of the employed labour force in many advanced market economies--a phenomenon variously termed "underemployment", "underutilisation", or "overqualification". Conversely, both experiential learning and workplace case studies suggest…

In this article, I explain the practical learning challenges in distributed workplace learning (WL) that are engendered by distance and contradictory motives between distributed instructors. I draw lessons from an empirical study of the institution of a new profession in the British National Health Service that was operationalised through…