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This article examines the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on recent UK graduates' initial employment outcomes and how they experience the transition into a challenging labour market context. We draw on longitudinal survey and interview data, collected from recent graduates who had mainly graduated during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in summer 2020 that examines graduate perception of the labour market, impacts on labour market entry impacts and early career progression and effects of periods of unemployment or under-employment. The article shows some of the main impacts of the recent pandemic-affected labour market, including: widespread concerns about job opportunities and employer support, the perceived employment impacts of the pandemic and early signs of scarring and labour market disorientation amongst those who were struggling to find employment of their choice. Such experiences are clearly intensified during the specific COVID-19 context, but the policy implications they raise have wider relevance for supporting graduates during future periods of labour market volatility.

Ancestral SARS coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) and variants of concern (VOC) caused a global pandemic with a spectrum of disease severity. The mechanistic explaining variations related to airway epithelium are relatively understudied. Here, we biobanked airway organoids (AO) by preserving stem cell function. We optimized viral infection with H1N1/PR8 and comprehensively characterized epithelial responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection in phenotypically stable AO from 20 different subjects. We discovered Tetraspanin-8 (TSPAN8) as a facilitator of SARS-CoV-2 infection. TSPAN8 facilitates SARS-CoV-2 infection rates independently of ACE2-Spike interaction. In head-to-head comparisons with Ancestral SARS-CoV-2, Delta and Omicron VOC displayed lower overall infection rates of AO but triggered changes in epithelial response. All variants shared highest tropism for ciliated and goblet cells. TSPAN8-blocking antibodies diminish SARS-CoV-2 infection and may spur novel avenues for COVID-19 therapy.

To what extent do higher education regulators and quality agencies need to assess the level of scholarship in universities and other higher education providers? To answer this question, we need to address the following issues: What is scholarship and why does it need to be upheld? Does it feature in higher education quality standards and codes, and how would an agency go about assessing the level of scholarship? Scholarship is an essential dimension of a higher education learning environment based upon the educational theory of constructivism. Constructivism leads us to a concept of higher education based on the common pursuit of knowledge through inquiry. If the prime role of teachers is to stimulate and support student learning through inquiry, then it follows that they must be continually engaged in inquiry themselves. Agencies can take a risk-based approach to testing the level of scholarship in higher education providers, which will not normally be necessary for low-risk providers.

Declining graduate labour markets, perceived devaluing of degree qualifications, and intense focus on graduate employment metrics have increased pressure on universities to enhance their students' employability. Formal curricula developments have been accompanied by co-curricular and extra-curricular offerings intended to enhance students' career readiness and emerging graduate profiles. Using survey data from undergraduate and postgraduate students in an Australian and UK university (N = 352), multivariate techniques examined participation in employability-related activities and students' perceptions of their importance for their employability. Data revealed differential participation based on student profile characteristics and the type of activity undertaken. Overall, these were valued for boosting a range of employability-related facets, including networks, learning about future career and profile attractiveness to employers. The more aligned these activities were to intended career outcomes, the more importance they were ascribed. The implications of these findings for enhancing employability-related offerings in universities are discussed.

This article discusses the intensification of research performance demands in UK universities in relation to the complex terrain of academic identity formation. It considers whether a demand for academic researchers to produce and evidence economic and societal impact -- in the rewards game of the UK's performance-based research funding system, the Research Excellence Framework (REF) -- influences their self-concept as 'engaged researchers'. While a designation of being REF impactful may be considered constitutive to a researcher's sense of self-worth and advantageous to their professional and institutional profile, a consultation of researchers included within REF2014 impact case studies challenges these assumptions. Instead, respondents are found to complain of identity dispossession and exploitation by their universities where their public contributions are appropriated for positional gain. Their testimony confirms the prevalence of a culture of 'competitive accountability' across UK universities which is with a systemic insatiability for 'scholarly distinction', causing the privileging of appearance in rationalisations of publicly funded research. Using the theoretical insights of Guy Debord and Erving Goffman it is argued that REF impact elucidates the UK higher education sector as a 'society of the Spectacle' that subjugates 'authentic' versions of the academic Self. However, REF-impact is also seen to provide an opportunity for cultural detournément and a means to elicit and concurrently invert 'simulations' of research praxis', thus enabling the assertion or 'front-staging' of perceived and idealised academic identities.

Finding a conceptually informed and substantive means of understanding the value of higher education (HE) remains a challenging but crucial issue in the context of continued market-orientated policies. This article offers a way forward and posits that formal approaches to measuring the value of HE can only have currency if engaging in longer-term and sustainable notions of value given that many of the benefits of HE are manifest in less tangible, non-immediate and non-monetary outcomes. Capability perspectives are drawn upon better to capture the more developmental and longer-term value potentiality of a university education. We explicitly refer to three key spheres of value pertaining to personal, social and economic milieus that may be derived from HE. This approach moves beyond the utilitarian gain approach to value popularised in recent HE policy, in particular the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework. Instead, it brings into play the significance of agency and selfhood as key value dimensions, and a broader conception of working life. The implications for engaging with future measurements of the value of HE are also discussed.

The institutional form and conception of Higher Education have changed through the growth of mass higher education, which in many national systems now operates on market logics. Drawing on theories of credentialism, this article provides a critical analysis of the inter-relationship between massification and marketization and examines a range of consequences this has for institutional relations and dynamics. A central feature of credential inflation in mass systems has been the growing competition for scarce status goods and the reproduction of structural inequalities in accessing sought-after occupational outcomes. The policy context of marketization has concurrently reinforced the pressures on institutions to fulfil the promise held by governments, employers and graduates of enhancing human capital and Higher Education institutions' economic value. Accompanying New Public Management policy levers have further established institutional conditions based on competitive accountability and performative evaluation. We show how these pressures are manifested in new forms of instrumental rationality that valorize the commodification of academic credentials, and relatedly, studentship and academic scholarship. We finally consider the possible ways forward in appraising the goals of HE beyond credential inflation.

Purpose: This article provides empirical validation of the Graduate Capital Model, adopted at a UK Russell Group University as a tool to analyse and support the career preparedness of both undergraduates and postgraduate students. An overview of employability capitals and how the development of these will potentially result in positive employment outcomes is explored. We describe the development of a psychometric tool "the Graduate Capital Scale" that seeks to operationalize these capitals. We then draw on data to establish the factor structure, reliability and validity of the tool. Design/methodology/approach: This paper introduces a new psychometric instrument, called the "Graduate Capital Scale"; this self-reflective tool aligns closely with the five capitals within the Graduate Capital Model (Tomlinson, 2017) and has been designed for higher education students to self-assess their confidence in transitioning to the graduate labour market. Findings: Based on a sample of 1,501 students across data collection waves, the findings from the psychometric scale show good factor reliability and validity for the constructs central to the overarching Graduate Capital Model. Within each of the component of the model, high factors loading emerged for a range of scale items, including subject-related skills, social networking, perceived job market fit and engagement with extra-curricula activities. Few gender differences emerged across the constructs. Research limitations/implications: The research was confined to a specific English university comprised of mainly academically high-achieving and higher socio-economic students. However, there is significant scope for the model and related scale tool to be applied to diverse student groups given its wholistic nature. Practical implications: The scale has considerable potential to be incorporated into careers practices and also embedded into course programmes as it aligns with a range of related learning outcomes. There is significant scope for this approach to complement a range of pedagogical and practical career interventions, including: self-reflective tools within tutorials; measures of learning gain for specific interventions such as careers coaching and mentoring; and as a personal reflective tool in careers guidance. Social implications: The approach developed through this employability tool has scope to be used for diverse graduate groups, including those with lower levels of career confidence, preparedness and insight and including those from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Originality/value: This paper has introduced and demonstrated the validity of a practical careers and employability development tool that has significant practical applicability for students, graduates and practitioners. Moreover, this scale supports a pre-existing conceptually driven model and has demonstrated a clear alignment between theory and practice in the area of graduate employability.

This article examines how the value of higher education (HE) is currently being (re)framed in two European countries: England and Portugal. HE has been central to a global discourse on the future of knowledge economy, whilst also being subject to the policy framework of New Public Management. Being so, the changing value of HE is related to the ways in which its missions are understood and must be considered within the context of massification, as well as of a growing importance of employability. Drawing on published research and also considering national policy documents and statistical data produced by international organizations, the analysis demonstrates how HE in these two countries is currently being (re)framed, recognizing differences and similarities that express national specificities, as well as exploring how these have evolved within the wider national and pan-national policy context. Overall, the examination demanded going beyond the marketization approach by complementing it with the idea of public good and leads us to stress the importance of the tension between these two approaches as an analytical framework to better understand the changes occurring in different national contexts, within a transnational framework in which the knowledge economy and the central role of HE seems to be indisputably accepted.

The relationship between universities and employer organisations has been given significant attention in the context of a changing graduate economy and the policy imperative to enhance post-university returns. This article presents a conceptual analysis of this relationship in the context of structural changes on both sides and its bearing on the nature, form and outcomes emerging from this relationship. Three key conceptual domains relating to theories of human capital, signalling and institutionalism are outlined to show the dynamics of the university-employer interplay and employer behaviour towards recruiting graduates. This is then further illustrated by an outline of salient research evidence from employers' perceptions of graduate employability and approaches to recruitment. The article shows that a set of largely contextual and cultural dimensions underscores much of this relationship and this transcends the supply-demand and skill mismatch accounts which pervade policy approaches on how this relationship should operate in practice. Implications for higher education institutions and key stakeholders in this relationship are further illustrated.

The study examines the prevalence of emergent professional identity (PI) among different groups of higher education students as well as the determining factors in the formation of PI. Drawing on evidence from a survey among Australian and UK students (N = 433), from two institutions and across a range of disciplines, empirical and conceptual insights are developed on the formation and impacts of students' professional identity. The article shows the significance of identity formation as a crucial bridge between higher education and future employment and its mediation by other key resources -- in particular social and cultural capital -- that students acquire before entering the labour market. The relative strength of identity formations can impact on students' sense of familiarity, proximity, and confidence around targeted employment areas. The article finally discusses the implications this has for individuals and institutions.

This article provides evidence and insight on the demand-side of graduate employment and selection through an investigation of employers' conceptions of what constitutes hireable and employable graduates. Drawing on evidence from a qualitative study with a diverse range of employers in the UK, the article shows that employers understand graduates' employability to encompass a complex mix of key resources, understood here as capitals, that enable graduates to present a compelling narrative of employability. Departing from conventional graduate skills approaches, the article integrates signaling and socio-cultural approaches for examining the ways in which capitals operate as signals that inform employer conceptions of which graduates are perceived to be most hireable and ultimately employable. A range of human, organisational-cultural and identity capitals enhance the value of graduates' profiles and provide signaling information that enables employers to screen graduate potential in competitive and crowded labour markets.

The concept of capital has risen in prominence within educational policy and practice in the UK since Ofsted introduced cultural capital into its inspection processes in 2019. At the same time, fractured discourses exist across different types of capital -- one of which concerns capitals that are negative in constitution and/or impact. This paper addresses both through: (1) A systematic literature review of these negativities (in social, economic, and intellectual capital) and a thematic analysis of these papers, leading to the derivation of a definition of negative capital; (2) An evaluation of the merit of negative capital via its compatibility with Bourdieu's concepts of social field, social field homology, habitus, and hysteresis; and (3) The application of negative capital to a range of examples from educational practice and theory, including a challenge to Ofsted's use of cultural capital.

This paper addresses the limited empirical analysis of higher education students' perceptions of contemporary labour market demands. It explores their perspectives on the health of the graduate labour market, what factors determine these and how their perceptions relate to self-perceived employability, career proactivity, career control and efforts to develop positional advantage. Further, the study examines determinants of students' career planning, all in the context of a challenging graduate labour market and higher education systems that have become more market-driven. The paper draws on evidence from a survey among Australian and UK students (N = 433), from two institutions and across a range of disciplines. Data revealed a number of significant findings. Overall, students who reported more positive perceptions of the current labour market were more likely to develop higher self-perceptions of employability, believe they had a greater sense of control over their career yet were less engaged with proactive career behaviours. Students perceived employability, their sense of career control and their reported career proactivity positively determined their engagement in career planning. The study enhances our understanding of the impact of labour market demand-side factors on student approaches to careers. It raises significant implications for universities and their career practitioners in identifying ways of enhancing students' career planning strategies within a more challenging labour market context.

This paper identifies a nascent trend in several countries regarding increased collection, public availability and use of destination data for graduates of secondary education, with policy ambitions to support pupil-level decision-making and drive provider-level accountability. This trend mirrors the previous development of such data for higher education graduates and underpins a policy direction of data visibility and data engineering to support labour market objectives, via an assumed approach to change that privileges financial factors in career decision-making. Reforms in England are identified as an example of extreme practice, illustrating the practical potential of such data as well as potential pitfalls. Building on the pre-existing critique, the authors highlight three biases particularly prevalent in the new data: bias for continued education, bias for more stable, traditional forms of employment that disadvantages particular sectors, and bias for a provider-centric view of outcomes. Mitigations via an enhanced role for adolescent career counselling and improved data are discussed.

In English higher education, the Teaching Excellence Framework represents a very significant recent policy lever in the continued operation of a measured market in the sector. Conceived as a policy to enhance and make further transparent the quality of teaching, it utilises a variety of key measurements to establish sets of related outcomes upon which effective teaching can be assessed. Drawing upon Bourdieu's concept of symbolic violence and adopting policy framing as an analytical approach, we illustrate how the Teaching Excellence Framework and its related discursive techniques are significant in (re)producing the institutional conditions which enable market policy to operate effectively. The article focuses specifically on three core pillars of the marketisation project of English higher education that are strongly affirmed: the further enactment of students as consumers and universities as producers, the related pre-occupation with graduates' employability and future returns and the uncritical application of metrics to signify institutions' performance value. We show how misrecognition operates by a market policy cloaking itself under the guise of student empowerment and quality, and call for academic and political practices that forge acts of resistance.

The paper draws on evidence from a survey of Australian and UK students (N = 433) on students' career values and their relationship to their proactivity in career self-management. Much of the dominant approaches to careers have focused on career competencies and adaptability in the context of increased movement from traditional to more self-managed career trajectories. Limited attention has been given to the role of career values in shaping individuals' approaches to career management, particularly among higher education students. This study reveals data on a range of career values among students on a continuum between intrinsic and extrinsic careers. It revealed a preponderance of intrinsic career values and a clear relationship emerged on the strength of career values and levels of proactivity towards career management. Further, higher levels of intrinsic and extrinsic career values were reported for certain student groups. The article discusses the implications of these data for enhancing students' career planning and engagement.

This study deployed a qualitative approach to explore an alternative perspective regarding graduate migrants' employability. Twenty graduate migrants in Australia participated in in-depth interviews. Findings revealed graduate migrants faced various challenges in the target labour market, and to successfully secure employment it was important for them to develop key forms of capital -- i.e., excellent technical knowledge, relationships with 'significant others', strong career identity and psychological resilience, and exercise agency in interlinking these capitals so that they could make use of their strengths and coat weaknesses. Results from the study imply that managing, teaching, and professional staff members should collaborate closely to develop well-rounded programmes to sufficiently equip international students with multidimensional resources.

Assessing the value of HE has now become embroiled in discussions of its functions and outputs in the context of increased marketisation. Much of this is based on a fairly crude value framing concerning the economic impact, return value and, measured performance, derived from HE. This article explores the concept of value associated with the work of Dewey and applies this to current market principles and dynamics in HE, particularly the distinctions he draws between value means and ends in the process of valuation. As well as examining the tensions and possible interplays between intrinsic and instrumental values, and ways of bridging this tension, the article analyses the implications this has for HE in its current market form. It critically engages with the characteristic ways in which dominant measurement and markers of value are applied in assessing the value generated by institutions and discusses the implications for market-orientated HE systems.

A critical analysis is developed of the dominant meanings of value in marketised higher education. In policy terms, this has become informed by the logics of the measured market whereby value has become synonymous with economic return and institutional accountability. The notion of value is one which permeates many discussions on the purpose of higher education and the perceived benefits it confers onto individuals and society as a whole. This, however, remains largely implicit and unearthing the specific meaning of value (and values) clearly presents challenges. This article critically examines a variety of concepts relevant to discussion of the value of higher education, including the relationship between value and quality, consumerism, goods and performativity. In each case, it unpacks their meanings and implications for the relationship between students and institutions, particularly at a time when this is seen to be increasingly transactional. It then outlines an alternative value framing to the utilitarian 'value for money' so prevalent in much market-driven policy.