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Purpose: In the context of far-reaching changes in higher education and the labour market, there has been extensive discussion on what constitutes graduate employability and what shapes graduates' labour market outcomes. Many of these discussions are based on skills-centred approaches and related supply-side logic. The purpose of this paper is to develop an alternative, relational conceptualisation of employability based on the concept of capitals. It discusses how this provides a more detailed and multi-dimensional account of the resources graduates draw upon when transitioning to the labour market. Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents a new model on graduate employability, linked to five areas of capital which are seen as constitutive of graduates' employability and significant to their transitions to the labour market. The paper draws together existing conceptual approaches and research studies to illustrate the different features of the model and how they relate to graduate employability. It also discusses some practical implications for those helping to facilitate graduates' transitions to the job market. Findings: The paper argues that the graduate capital model presents a new way of understanding graduate employability which addresses the challenges of facilitating graduates' transitions and early career management. The forms of capital outlined are conceived as key resources that confer benefits and advantages onto individuals. These resources encompass a range of human, social, cultural, identity and psycho-social dimensions and are acquired through graduates' formal and informal experiences. Research limitations/implications: Whilst this is a conceptual model, it has potentially strong implications for future research in this area in terms of further research exploration on the core components and their application in the labour market. Practical implications: This re-conceptualization of graduate has significant implication for graduates' career management and strategising in developing resources for enhancing their transitions to and progression within the labour market. It also has implications for career educators in developing practical employability strategies that can be used within institutional settings. Social implications: The paper raises salient implications for the effective and equitable management of graduate outcomes post-graduation which has clear relevance for all stakeholders in graduate employability, including students/graduates, career educators and employers. Originality/value: The paper develops a new model for conceptualising graduate employability and illustrates and applies this to discussion of graduate employability. It also raises practical applications around the different components of the model.

This article first offers a survey of what has become an area of increasing interest in higher education: the rise of the so-called "student-consumer". This has been linked in part to the marketisation of higher education and the increased personal financial contributions individual students make towards their higher education. Drawing upon a qualitative study with students across seven different UK higher education institutions, the article shows that while there is evidence of growing identification with a consumer-orientated approach, this does not fundamentally capture their perspectives and relationships to higher education. The article shows the degree of variability in attitude and approaches towards consumerism of higher education and how students still perceive higher education in ways that do not conform to the ideal student-consumer approach. The implications for university relations and how policy-makers and institutions themselves approach the issue are discussed.

This article develops a conceptual understanding of initial employability development, specifically the transition into first career destinations. Substantial previous research focuses on the role of individuals in ensuring employment readiness and continued employability development. Studies also identify the importance of employers for sustained employability. However, the interdependence and interaction between employers and individuals are under-theorized. We integrate social exchange theory and signalling theory to conceptualize initial employability development. We propose a cyclical model that comprises interactive and reciprocal signalling and social exchange processes between employers and individuals. The model overcomes the limitations of linear conceptualizations and one-sided models that theorize employability as either the outcome of human capital resources deployed by individuals or as managed by employers in employability development processes. We extend the processual approach to employability by redirecting theoretical attention to the interaction of signalling and social exchange as fundamental to employability development. We conclude by discussing implications in relation to employability research and theory development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s, UK government policy has sought to increase access to higher education, with a plan to improve social mobility. However, enhancing the employability prospects for all has proven difficult to achieve through widening participation alone. This research explores this paradox, via the experiences of first-in-family undergraduates as they prepare to enter the UK graduate labour market. The concept of capital development is applied to understand the structural disadvantages experienced by students who lack a familial university background. Twenty-five interviews with first-in-family students at a Russell Group university in the UK were analysed thematically, with the application of the Graduate Capital Model. Findings reveal the high value attached by these students to human capital and the barriers they face in accruing social and cultural capital. This research illustrates how students who lack such capital face numerous obstacles in developing the strong career identities necessary to transition to graduate employment. Whilst the Graduate Capital Model gives valuable insight into the experiences of these students, the role of economic capital in shaping prospects is also recognised. Recommendations are proposed as to how universities, careers services and employers might act in support of first-in-family students' graduate transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the ways in which the increasingly market-based higher education (HE) landscape of United Kingdom (UK) HE is shaping students' attitudes and responses towards their HE. Contemporary HE policy has framed HE as a private good that generates largely private benefits. There has also been a concern that these changes will distort institutional relations and the traditional value of participating in HE, reinforcing the growing commodification of UK HE. On the basis of a qualitative study with students in a range of higher education institutions from the four UK countries, it outlines the main impacts recent policy is having on students' attitudes and relationship to HE. Dominant market-driven discourses around investment, consumerism, employability and competition indicate widespread concerns among contemporary HE students about operating in higher-stakes markets, which are intensified by increased personal financial contribution towards HE. While the data reveal an identification with the student as "consumer" and stringent expectations over what HE provides, it also points to an ethic of self-responsibility that is built on highly individualised discourses of personal application, proactivity and experience optimisation. Goal-driven and instrumental learning are evident, which relate to widespread concerns about future returns and the private good value of HE.

Signal transduction pathways guided by cellular receptors commonly exhibit low-level constitutive signaling in a continuous, ligand-independent manner. The dynamic equilibrium of positive and negative regulators establishes such a tonic signal. Ligand-independent signaling by the precursors of mature antigen receptors regulates development of B and T lymphocytes. Here we describe a basal signal that controls gene expression profiles in the Jurkat T cell line and mouse thymocytes. Using DNA microarrays and Northern blots to analyze unstimulated cells, we demonstrate that expression of a cluster of genes, including RAG-1 and RAG-2, is repressed by constitutive signals requiring the adapter molecules LAT and SLP-76. This TCR-like pathway results in constitutive low-level activity of Erk and Abl kinases. Inhibition of Abl by the drug STI-571 or inhibition of signaling events upstream of Erk increases RAG-1 expression. Our data suggest that physiologic gene expression programs depend upon tonic activity of signaling pathways independent of receptor ligation.

BackgroundBruton's tyrosine kinase (Btk) is essential for B cell development and function. Mutations of Btk elicit X-linked agammaglobulinemia in humans and X-linked immunodeficiency in the mouse. Btk has been proposed to participate in B cell antigen receptor-induced signaling events leading to activation of phospholipase C-gamma2 (PLCgamma2) and calcium mobilization. However it is unclear whether Btk activation is alone sufficient for these signaling events, and whether Btk can activate additional pathways that do not involve PLCgamma2. To address such issues we have generated Btk:ER, a conditionally active form of the kinase, and expressed it in the PLCgamma2-deficient DT40 B cell line.ResultsActivation of Btk:ER was sufficient to induce multiple B cell signaling pathways in PLCgamma2-sufficient DT40 cells. These included tyrosine phosphorylation of PLCgamma2, mobilization of intracellular calcium, activation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) and c-Jun NH2-terminal kinase (JNK) mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathways, and apoptosis. In DT40 B cells deficient for PLCgamma2, Btk:ER activation failed to induce the signaling events described above with the consequence that the cells failed to undergo apoptosis.ConclusionsThese data suggest that Btk:ER regulates downstream signaling pathways primarily via PLCgamma2 in B cells. While it is not known whether activated Btk:ER precisely mimics activated Btk, this conditional system will likely facilitate the dissection of the role of Btk and its family members in a variety of biological processes in many different cell types.

The move towards a market-driven HE system in the UK and active policy promotion of students as consumers has generated much commentary on the ways in which students' expectations and experiences have been transformed. This article introduces and develops a conceptualization of contemporary higher students' views of their relationship to higher education within the new institutional conditions of marketization in the UK. This is based on a UK-based study which examined at the impacts of recent reforms on students' attitudes to HE, this study utilizes the concept of social ambivalence to illustrate the complexity of their perspectives. Focusing on three key areas in which ambivalence frames attitudes and perceptions, it shows that students' values and approaches are often characterized by competing and co-existent positions. Whilst the study found evidence of instrumental goals and values, often in contrast with developmental ones, there was also a discernible ambivalent ground between the two. The article argues that this may be largely influenced by the wider context of marketized higher education also operating at a time of wider structural changes.

This paper outlines core features of what it terms "consumer-based learning" and relates this to the context of increasing utilitarian goals and values of higher education. It argues that this presents challenges broader than the immediate teaching and learning environment and student experience, which also potentially impacts the future lives of graduates leaving university.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of some of the dominant empirical and conceptual themes in the area of graduate employment and employability over the past decade. The paper considers the wider context of higher education (HE) and labour market change, and the policy thinking towards graduate employability. It draws upon various studies to highlight the different labour market perceptions, experiences and outcomes of graduates in the United Kingdom and other national contexts. It further draws upon research that has explored the ways in which students and graduates construct their employability and begin to manage the transition from HE to work. The paper explores some of the conceptual notions that have informed understandings of graduate employability, and argues for a broader understanding of employability than that offered by policymakers.

Among western governments large-scale leadership development initiatives represent an increasingly deployed means of promoting the acculturation of school leaders to support educational reforms and ongoing improvement. England's sophisticated initiative centres on the National College for Leadership in Schools and Children's Services, a politically driven intervention to acculturate headteachers and other senior school staff into transformational and distributed leadership. It is linked in significant measure to government-driven reform, alongside continuous improvement efforts. Qualitative research whose focus included tracking the evolution of this initiative showed how moderate mediation, within broad structural and ideological limits, is integral to its implementation. The fostered leadership culture appeared to interact with recipients' existing organizational and wider professional cultures valuing a substantial degree of local autonomy, stimulating reinterpretation and adaptation. Yet mediation appeared ultimately to have supported the government's agenda through local adaptation of reforms and some independent innovation consistent with the reform thrust. Contemporary government policy is to promote innovation, but the continued retention of nationally set expectations, strong accountability measures, and heavy sanctions seem likely to limit its potential for promoting locally inspired educational improvement. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

Government responses to globalisation include developing educational leaders as reformers for workforce competitiveness in the knowledge economy. Qualitative research tracked interventions involving national leadership development bodies to acculturate leaders in secondary schools and universities. Acculturating leaders as reformers was mediated through interaction with professional cultures valuing autonomy. Yet mediation supported the government's global positioning through adapting reforms and independent innovation. (Contains 2 tables.)

This article presents an alternative approach to the dominant analysis of graduate employability, through a consideration of the dynamic and socially mediated interaction that graduates have with labour market. This interaction is largely constitutive of their dispositions and identities as graduates, and entails a dynamic interplay between graduates' agency and the wider structural context of the labour market. Informed by structuration theory, this perspective offers a richer, more socially nuanced account into employability than that presented by dominant policy-based approaches, namely the human capital and "skills" agenda. Such approaches present a largely de-contextualised account of employability and a somewhat simplistic notion of the link between education and the labour market more generally. In this article, we argue that employability must be seen as an active social process, and that this process is mediated significantly by the way graduates position themselves, and are positioned, within a continually shifting labour market context.

The UK Government is calling upon higher education students to see their learning as an investment that will give them direct benefits in the labour market. At the same time, the relationship between educational credentials and their returns in labour market has been changing in recent times. Based on a qualitative study with 53 final-year undergraduate students in a pre-1992 university, this article examines the way higher education students understand the role of their educational credentials in relation to their future employability. It shows that students perceive their academic qualifications as having a declining role in shaping their employment outcomes in what is perceived to be a congested and competitive graduate labour market. While academic credentials are still seen as a significant dimension of their employability, students increasingly see the need to add value to them in order to gain an advantage in the labour market. (Contains 1 note.)

This article examines the way students, making the transition from higher education into the labour market, construct, understand and begin to manage their employability. It draws upon a qualitative study of 53 final-year undergraduates in a pre-1992 university in the UK. It firstly explores students' perceptions of the current labour market for graduates and how they understand future career progression. It examines their different orientations and attitudes to work and careers through the development of an ideal-type model. It then considers how these orientations influence the way students approach future work and careers and manage their employability, and further discusses some of the implications this has for current policies around higher education and the labour market in the UK context. (Contains 1 figure.)