PhD programmes are considered as transmission channels to provide specialisation and skills to students who will be employed as highly-qualified workers or researchers. Focusing on the Spanish case, they are exerting a positive influence on workers' careers since doctorate holders have a privileged situation in the labour market. This article…

Focusing on Hungarian minority youth in a rural Slovakian setting, this article analyses their higher education aspirations and choices amidst significant economic, political and educational reforms. Relying on mixed methods and a longitudinal design, the research follows a cohort of high school students from their last year of secondary school…

Most educational research examines school outcomes at certain stages or at the final stage of the school career. This article looks at the entire school career and the transition to the labour market. It focuses on key transitions to identify the educational institutional arrangements that either help or hinder school and labour market success…

This article studies entrepreneurial education and its impact on job-skills matches for higher education graduates. Those who possess entrepreneurial skills are assumed to be more market aware and creative in their job search. They are also expected to foresee which job offers would and would not, match their skills. Using a large comparative…

Argumentation and metacognitive reflection are required for effective thinking and convincing argumentation in engineering co-design. This study investigated engineering students' argumentation and metacognitive reflection in their final group reports and their correlation with the quality of their work in co-design. The groups practiced and…

A number of key graduate outcomes related to industry-based interventions and work-industry-related activities (WIA's) are specified by the Swedish Higher Education Ordinance for all Engineering Degree Programmes. A paucity of research regarding student perceptions of these WIAs and their role in student's motivation for learning motivates the…

Doctoral degree holders may struggle to find a job, even though they possess the highest level of education delivered by universities. Whilst learning experiences' quality has been argued to affect the doctoral degree holders' ability to get a job, little is known about the relationship between these dimensions. To shed light on this issue, the…

The future of the humanities has been the subject of debate in several countries where it is often stated that too many students are accepted into courses that offer relatively poor employment opportunities. In this article, we examine the development in mismatch among master's graduates in Norway for the period 1995-2015, to see whether this…

The gap between industry needs and engineering graduates' competences is being tackled by project-based courses, which also help to develop key innovation competences to address current societal challenges. Nevertheless, there is limited understanding about what innovation competences are developed through the different types of project-based…

Universities are increasingly expected to cooperate with society and the world of work to ensure relevant higher education. One example is the introduction of mandated employer panels, where external members are brought in to advise universities on study programmes. Building on research on third mission activities, this article examines employer…

The professional formation of new graduates and their ability to perform well at the start of their career depends on the development of both technical skills and professional competencies. Whilst the latter aspects have become increasingly considered within engineering programs, they are often learnt within an academic context rather than a…

Professional skills have long been perceived as lacking in junior engineers. Adopting a social realist theoretical framework of knowledge in practice, a hypothesis-based survey study of early career engineers' perceptions of engineering expertise was conducted. It investigated a professional skills readiness difference between initial career…

Internationally, challenges were raised towards engineering education concerning the industry's widespread questioning of the lack of practical skills of engineering graduates. Scholars in engineering educational research have tried to better understand professional engineers' practices so as to inform engineering education. Concerning the lack of…

To assist in resolving the perceived lack of transversal competencies (TCs) of engineering graduates by industry, this study investigates the characteristics of transforming an existing industry TC instrument for use in engineering education. The instrument consists of 36 nuanced sub-competencies with the corresponding definitions and descriptive…

The transition from engineering student to early career engineer is often difficult as not all skills that constitute effective engineering practice are formally taught. Work placements are suggested as a solution by providing opportunities to learn skills that academia is unable to teach. However, academic requirements for skills such as research…