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This study aims to fill a gap in our understanding of the relationship between two major topics in educational research: higher education choices and students' conceptions of employability. It explores, first, the balance between vocational calling, instrumental considerations and chance in subject choice and, second, the relation between vocational calling and two alternative conceptions of employability (thin and thick) articulated in the article. Using survey data from 'Education' students in Spain, the results show an association between a strong vocational calling in subject choice and a 'thick' conception of employability that goes beyond credential performance and underlines the importance of an economy of experience. By contrast, students with lower vocational calling adopt a narrower ('thin') conception of employability, based on credential performance. The consequences of these results for theory and for practice are discussed, highlighting the need to better acknowledge the role of interests, and not only skills, in the employability agenda.

This article reframes the debate on the validation of non-formal and informal learning by connecting it to the sociology of education and curriculum studies literatures. Building on these literatures, the article differentiates between four types of validation: (a) covert and implicit, (b) covert but embedded, (c) overt and functional and (d) overt and institutional. Based on this classification, I problematise the widespread view that there is little validation in formal education. Instead, I argue, much validation takes place in formal education, but it is mostly covert and goes unnoticed. Validation is a common practice when it contributes to the performance metrics of formal education institutions, when it enables institutions to take credit for learning that occurs outside of them, when the non-formal and informal learning that is validated aligns with their established curricula and when it does not require changes in pedagogy or assessment practices. Validation in formal education is not so much characterised by rejection or disregard as by selectivity and instrumentality.

The link between higher education and employment is central to the understanding of social stratification and social mobility. We use three theories to analyse the importance of education and credentials in recruitment decisions in European graduate labour markets: human capital (HC), network capital (NC) and reputational capital (RC) theory. Latent class modelling was applied to data from over 5,000 European private-sector companies to allow segmentation. The results identify four groups of companies using different HC, NC and RC mixes in the recruitment process. A 'complementary effect' was found between these forms of capital at the time of recruitment. Company classes, however, vary in their emphasis on different types of capital according to their characteristics. The article further contributes to the literature by exploring how national political economies relate to segmentation patterns, and questioning some of the central tenets of the Varieties of Capitalism literature.

Over the last decades, there has been increasing interest in the topic of international student mobility (ISM). However, there is surprisingly little analysis of the ways in which different characteristics and types of short-term ISM or the importance of host education systems and labour markets may affect early career outcomes of formerly mobile graduates. Therefore, in this study we explore, first, the relationship between participation in ISM at the Bachelor and Master level and graduates' wages and the duration of education-to-work transitions. Second, we investigate variations in ISM labour market outcomes according to the type of mobility: study, internships, or combinations of both. Third, we examine the relationship between labour market outcomes of formerly mobile students and the country of destination's position in higher education international prestige hierarchies and labour market competitiveness. We use the Dutch National Alumni Survey 2015, a representative survey of higher education graduates in the Netherlands, conducted 1.5 years after graduation. Before controlling for selection into ISM, the results suggest the existence of labour market returns to ISM and that the heterogeneity of ISM experiences matters as labour market outcomes vary according to the level of study, the type of mobility, and the positioning of the country of destination in international prestige hierarchies. However, after controlling for selection into ISM through propensity score matching, the differences in early career outcomes between formerly mobile and non-mobile graduates disappear, suggesting that they cannot be causally attributed to their ISM experience. We explain these results with reference to the characteristics of the Dutch education system and labour market, where restricted possibilities for upward vertical mobility limit returns to ISM in the local labour market., Author(s): Christof Van Mol [sup.1] , Kim Caarls [sup.2] , Manuel Souto-Otero [sup.3] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.12295.3d, 0000 0001 0943 3265, Department of Sociology, Tilburg University, , Warandelaan 2, 5037 [...]

A major focus of sociological research is on the role of the credential as a 'currency of opportunity', mediating the relationship between education and occupational destinations. However, the labour market has largely remained a 'black box' in sociological and education policy studies. This article draws on 'big data' from over 21,000,000 job adverts to explore how employers in the UK describe job requirements, with particular reference to the role of credentials. It challenges existing theories premised upon the notion that higher levels of formal education determine individual (dis)advantage in the competition for jobs. Although they have different views of the relationship between credentials, opportunity and efficiency, these theories assume that credentials largely determine occupational hiring. Our analysis suggests that formal academic credentials play a relatively minor differentiating role in the UK labour market, as the majority of employer's place greater emphasis on 'job readiness'. This raises a number of issues for sociological and policy analysis, including the future role of credentials in the (re)production of educational and labour market inequalities. Methodologically, the article highlights how the use of big data can contribute to the analysis of education, skills and the labour market.

This article explores the relationship between education, training and the single market, focusing on the market for the production of policy evaluations in the areas of education and training, culture and youth of the European Commission. Two questions are addressed: the first question relates to the geographical distribution of the organisations that deliver policy evaluation services to the European Commission ('Commission') in those areas; and the second relates to the nature of the ideas for policy development put forward in the evaluations examined. Based on information gathered from 23 evaluations carried out between 2012 and 2016 (in particular, the circa 300 recommendations they included), the analysis reveals that although the Commission relied on competitive processes for the award of those evaluations, competition was somewhat restricted: there is a marked dominance of a limited number of countries as the powerhouses for the Commission's education policy evaluation. In relation to the second question, and by contrast to other policy spaces, the analysis provided little evidence of unfettered penetration of private sector 'ideological repertoires', lexicons and sensitivities into the European policy evaluation space.

The relationship between students and higher education is seen to have become increasingly transactional. We approach the study of the student–HE relationship in a novel way, by focusing on students' behaviour post-university, rather than on student narratives. Conceptually, the article builds on multidimensional views of student engagement and the differentiation between psychological transactional contracts – where students who achieve better academic results are more likely to donate – and relational contracts – where students donate more following engagement in social experiences. Making use of longitudinal data on donation behaviour from over 50,000 alumni from an English university over two decades, we find that while students who get better degree outcomes are more likely to donate, the association between participation in social experiences and donations is much stronger. This questions prevalent transactional models of HE and underlines the limitations of purely consumerist views of the relation between students and higher education institutions, even in the marketized UK context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines, primarily based on large-scale survey data, the functionalist proposition that HE customers, students and employers, demand rankings to be able to adopt informed decisions on where to study and who to recruit respectively. This is contrasted to a Weberian "conflict" perspective on rankings in which positional competition is key. The article concludes that rankings are better understood as instruments in positional competition for a minority of global players. They are a crucial source of information only for particular groups of international students and employers. The empirical analysis further suggests that the state of economic development, cultural aspects and the availability of top-ranked institutions in the home HE system are important factors in explaining differences in the importance of rankings across countries. We conclude by arguing that national governments and HE institutions should re-visit the assumption of a wide-spread importance of rankings for students and employers.

"Delayed participation" in higher education (HE) is an increasingly important feature of modern HE systems in many countries. Despite this, surprisingly little empirical research has been undertaken seeking to better understand levels of delayed adult participation in HE across Europe. The present article responds to this gap by analysing country-level data on delayed adult participation in HE across 15 European countries and by modelling associations between participation levels and a range of theoretically derived economic, social, demographic and systemic factors. The findings suggest that there is considerably more cross-national variation in levels of adult delayed participation and that prevalent typologies of HE, such as Trow's, fail to give recognition to the importance of delayed participation. The modelling work finds that social and demographic factors exhibit relatively strong associations with delayed participation in HE. This questions the pre-eminence of economic factors within much of the academic literature, policy discourse and policy activity.

How the labour market operates in an increasingly digital context has remained under-researched. The article explains why the digital labour market is in urgent need of study, as digitalisation transforms how labour markets are structured and shape the competition for jobs. Digital tools give job seekers new ways of describing themselves and give employers access to new sources of data on candidates, in real-time and at low cost. We identify three dimensions of digital labour markets that distinguish them from earlier 'analogue' models – Information, Control and Engagement (ICE). We explain how changes in these dimensions contribute to a restructuring of the recruitment process, and outline implications for theories on the education–work relationship and for the analysis of social opportunity and inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing participation in the Erasmus study abroad program in Europe is a clear policy goal, and student-reported barriers and drivers are regularly monitored. This article uses student survey data from seven countries to examine the extent to which student-level barriers can explain the considerable cross-country variation in Erasmus participation rates. We observe remarkable similarities between countries with respect to how barriers cluster for students and what barriers characterize non-participants compared with participants. The study confirms that home ties and lack of interest are most robust predictors for non-participation. Data on student-level barriers and motivations, however, give surprisingly little information to explain why students in some countries are considerably more active participants. For further understanding, we need to study more how national and institutional policies and context influence students' decision making and help them overcome perceived barriers to mobility.

The article argues that current discussions about governance through data in education can be fruitfully extended through: (1) the establishment of connections with wider debates about the role of commensuration processes and governmentality in the recreation of education systems; (2) greater emphasis on the "artefacts" through which data--increasingly in the form of digital data--is collected, displayed and retrieved; and (3) the strategies of alignment and resistance that social actors adopt to deal with the increase in data availability and capacity for the automated interrogation of that data. The article concludes that these artefacts and strategies are providing a wide set of "active" social actors with new resources in, and arenas for, their struggles for economic as well as social advancement, processes of self-monitoring and also, crucially, of self-formation. The article focuses on the interplay and tensions between governments and bureaucracies, private companies, education institutions, and various types of "active" individuals (the individual customer, the individual manager and the individual worker) in the process of surveillance and recreation of education through digital data.

This article explores (1) the degree to which immigrants can be considered dominant groups in the area of validation of non-formal and informal learning and are subject to specific validation measures in 33 European countries; (2) whether country clusters can be identified within Europe with regard to the dominance of immigrants in the area of validation; and (3) whether validation systems are likely to lead to the inclusion of immigrants or foster a process of "devaluation" of their skills and competences in their host countries. Based on the "European Inventory on validation of non-formal and informal learning" project (chiefly its 2014 update) as well as a review of 124 EU-funded (Lifelong Learning Programme and European Social Fund) validation projects, the authors present the following findings: (1) in the majority of European countries, immigrants are not a dominant group in the area of validation. (2) In terms of country clusters, Central European and Nordic countries tend to consider immigrants a dominant target group for validation to a greater extent than Southern and Eastern European countries. (3) Finally, few initiatives aim to ensure that immigrants' skills and competences are not devalued in their host country, and those initiatives which are in place benefit particularly those defined as "highly skilled" individuals, on the basis of their productive potential. There is, thus, a "low road" and a "high road" to validation, leading to a process of polarisation in the recognition of the skills and competences of immigrants.

This study aims to fill a gap in our understanding of the relationship between two major topics in educational research: higher education choices and students' conceptions of employability. It explores, first, the balance between vocational calling, instrumental considerations and chance in subject choice and, second, the relation between vocational calling and two alternative conceptions of employability (thin and thick) articulated in the article. Using survey data from 'Education' students in Spain, the results show an association between a strong vocational calling in subject choice and a 'thick' conception of employability that goes beyond credential performance and underlines the importance of an economy of experience. By contrast, students with lower vocational calling adopt a narrower ('thin') conception of employability, based on credential performance. The consequences of these results for theory and for practice are discussed, highlighting the need to better acknowledge the role of interests, and not only skills, in the employability agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The link between higher education and employment is central to the understanding of social stratification and social mobility. We use three theories to analyse the importance of education and credentials in recruitment decisions in European graduate labour markets: human capital (HC), network capital (NC) and reputational capital (RC) theory. Latent class modelling was applied to data from over 5,000 European private-sector companies to allow segmentation. The results identify four groups of companies using different HC, NC and RC mixes in the recruitment process. A 'complementary effect' was found between these forms of capital at the time of recruitment. Company classes, however, vary in their emphasis on different types of capital according to their characteristics. The article further contributes to the literature by exploring how national political economies relate to segmentation patterns, and questioning some of the central tenets of the Varieties of Capitalism literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major focus of sociological research is on the role of the credential as a 'currency of opportunity', mediating the relationship between education and occupational destinations. However, the labour market has largely remained a 'black box' in sociological and education policy studies. This article draws on 'big data' from over 21,000,000 job adverts to explore how employers in the UK describe job requirements, with particular reference to the role of credentials. It challenges existing theories premised upon the notion that higher levels of formal education determine individual (dis)advantage in the competition for jobs. Although they have different views of the relationship between credentials, opportunity and efficiency, these theories assume that credentials largely determine occupational hiring. Our analysis suggests that formal academic credentials play a relatively minor differentiating role in the UK labour market, as the majority of employer's place greater emphasis on 'job readiness'. This raises a number of issues for sociological and policy analysis, including the future role of credentials in the (re)production of educational and labour market inequalities. Methodologically, the article highlights how the use of big data can contribute to the analysis of education, skills and the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between education, training and the single market, focusing on the market for the production of policy evaluations in the areas of education and training, culture and youth of the European Commission. Two questions are addressed: the first question relates to the geographical distribution of the organisations that deliver policy evaluation services to the European Commission ('Commission') in those areas; and the second relates to the nature of the ideas for policy development put forward in the evaluations examined. Based on information gathered from 23 evaluations carried out between 2012 and 2016 (in particular, the circa 300 recommendations they included), the analysis reveals that although the Commission relied on competitive processes for the award of those evaluations, competition was somewhat restricted: there is a marked dominance of a limited number of countries as the powerhouses for the Commission's education policy evaluation. In relation to the second question, and by contrast to other policy spaces, the analysis provided little evidence of unfettered penetration of private sector 'ideological repertoires', lexicons and sensitivities into the European policy evaluation space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines, primarily based on large-scale survey data, the functionalist proposition that HE customers, students and employers, demand rankings to be able to adopt informed decisions on where to study and who to recruit respectively. This is contrasted to a Weberian ‘conflict’ perspective on rankings in which positional competition is key. The article concludes that rankings are better understood as instruments in positional competition for a minority of global players. They are a crucial source of information only for particular groups of international students and employers. The empirical analysis further suggests that the state of economic development, cultural aspects and the availability of top-ranked institutions in the home HE system are important factors in explaining differences in the importance of rankings across countries. We conclude by arguing that national governments and HE institutions should re-visit the assumption of a wide-spread importance of rankings for students and employers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article contributes to a better understanding of the social acceptance of the investment model of volunteering, that is, the view that volunteering can enhance employability through the development of professionally relevant knowledge and competences. Based on the analysis of Eurobarometer data, the article explores (1) the prevalence of the investment model of volunteering in the EU-27 countries and the extent to which this varies between individuals with the potential to make hiring decisions (IHP) and the general population, (2) the demographic factors associated with the acceptance of this model, (3) whether national differences in the acceptance of the model are better explained by variation between countries or cross-national demographic factors and (4) whether national institutional characteristics related to the competitiveness of the national labour market, the specificity of the education system, the strength of the continuing vocational training system and cultural factors influence acceptance. The results show that the acceptance of the investment model of volunteering is relatively widespread in Europe and that variation in the acceptance of the investment model among the general population is driven by both individual (age and class) and between-country differences (related to the strength of training for unemployed people), but variation is more attributable to differences between countries than cross-national demographic groups. IHP, on the other hand, tend to be more homogenous in their acceptance of the investment model than the general population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to contribute to a better understanding of the role of youth organisations in enhancing the employability of young people through the development of different forms of capital: human, social and psychological. Instead of asking questions about who access extra-curricular activities that may provide young people with positional advantages in the labour market and the class biases that arise in access, the article explores whether the benefits obtained from participation vary by socio-economic background. We make use of the Youth organisations and employability (YOE) database, which contains data from over 1000 young people in more than 40 European countries on the effects of involvement in youth organisations on different forms of capital: human, social and psychological. We find positive effects of involvement on all three forms of capital. The analysis suggests that the characteristics of the involvement in youth organisations are better predictors of its outcomes than are personal characteristics, and find no significant effects of socio-economic background on the reported benefits of participation in our sample. Policy implications are derived from these findings, calling for greater policy support to increase opportunities for the involvement of young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds in youth organisations and for better informing young people of the benefits of sustained involvement with youth organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Increasing participation in the Erasmus study abroad program in Europe is a clear policy goal, and student-reported barriers and drivers are regularly monitored. This article uses student survey data from seven countries to examine the extent to which student-level barriers can explain the considerable cross-country variation in Erasmus participation rates. We observe remarkable similarities between countries with respect to how barriers cluster for students and what barriers characterize non-participants compared with participants. The study confirms that home ties and lack of interest are most robust predictors for non-participation. Data on student-level barriers and motivations, however, give surprisingly little information to explain why students in some countries are considerably more active participants. For further understanding, we need to study more how national and institutional policies and context influence students’ decision making and help them overcome perceived barriers to mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article argues that current discussions about governance through data in education can be fruitfully extended through: (1) the establishment of connections with wider debates about the role of commensuration processes and governmentality in the recreation of education systems; (2) greater emphasis on the ‘artefacts’ through which data – increasingly in the form of digital data – is collected, displayed and retrieved; and (3) the strategies of alignment and resistance that social actors adopt to deal with the increase in data availability and capacity for the automated interrogation of that data. The article concludes that these artefacts and strategies are providing a wide set of ‘active’ social actors with new resources in, and arenas for, their struggles for economic as well as social advancement, processes of self-monitoring and also, crucially, of self-formation. The article focuses on the interplay and tensions between governments and bureaucracies, private companies, education institutions, and various types of ‘active’ individuals (the individual customer, the individual manager and the individual worker) in the process of surveillance and recreation of education through digital data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]