The Employability in Programme Development (EPD) project seeks to establish a feedback loop from the labour market to HEIs in order inform programme and course design to best support the employability of future graduates. It is funded by the European Commission from 2021-2023 under the Erasmus+ programme with a grant of €433,771. The project consortium is made up of five participating organisations. Four of these are HEIs, which provide complementary academic and administrative expertise drawn from four distinct higher education systems: England (University of Reading), Scotland (University of Glasgow), Spain (Autonomous University of Barcelona) and Belgium (Brussels Free University). We also collaborate with the Catalan Higher Education Quality Assurance Agency (AQU), which brings to the consortium expertise in graduate outcome surveys and access to institutional networks across Europe.

Informed by the needs of stakeholders, the project consortium will map the availability of information on skills demand in the context of each participating institution as well as the needs of practitioners in participating HEIs for labour market intelligence to inform their course and programme design. This in turn will be used to design and develop a prototype labour market intelligence dashboard for use by staff in HEIs. To augment secondary data sources made accessible through the dashboard, additional input on skills demand will be sought from employers. The project will also curate best practice in employability from across Europe and publish in a series of case studies.

The project is a response to a policy context, where mismatch between the skills of graduates and those demanded by employers is widely regarded as a source of disappointing graduate outcomes such as unemployment, underemployment and systemic inequalities. Compounded by economic shocks, the issue of graduate employment outcomes has become a policy priority. However, the situation is likely to worsen as a result of the economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis. Despite being less susceptible to the disease itself, young people are likely to be negatively affected by the economic impact given their precarious employment situation as the “first-out and last-in” group of the labour market – a dynamic that becomes even more pronounced during economic downturns as revealed following the 2008 financial crisis.

A wide range of information sources has emerged to inform the skills needs of local labour markets. Moreover, the European Education Area encourages collaboration on data collection in a harmonised and comparable way. However, practitioners in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) that are tasked with developing courses and programmes are not experts in labour market intelligence and are unlikely to utilise it to support the development of graduate employability attributes through their teaching. Moreover, even when they do it is unclear whether available labour market intelligence is suitable to inform course and programme development in higher education.

PI: Kristinn Hermannsson, School of Education, University of Glasgow

The following are Co-Is: 

Dickon Copsey, College of Social Sciences, University of Glasgow

Emma Smith, College of Social Sciences, University of Glasgow

Simonetta Longhi, Department of Economics, University of Reading

Sarah Jewell, Department of Economics, University of Reading

Johan Loekx, Artificial Intelligence Lab, Free University of Brussels

Rosario Scandurra, Department of Sociology, Autonomous University of Barcelona

Xavier Ramble, Department of Sociology, Autonomous University of Barcelona

Anna Prades Nebot, Internationalisation and Knowledge Generation Department, Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education in Catalonia

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The Gendered Journeys  project investigates how far, and in what ways, gender may have an influence in the progress of students through higher education, graduation and progression into skilled employment in STEM fields in India and Rwanda. At present, girls and women are markedly under-represented in STEM areas both as students and in the workforce in most countries across the globe. At the Higher Education level, only 35% of students enrolled in STEM studies internationally are women (UNESCO, 2017a). Addressing this problem is vital in ensuring equitable access to quality education and meaningful work, and is crucial for countries seeking to prioritise equitable economic development, speaking directly to UN SDGs 4, 5, and 6.

Both our countries of focus, India, and Rwanda, currently have a severe under-representation of women STEM students in HE, and in relation to the skilled workforce (WEF, 2018), and there is a limited amount of research in these countries, as in many global south contexts, on gender and STEM issues post-secondary school (for an overview see e.g. UNESCO, 2017a). What is particularly under-researched is the gendered journeys of students once they have accessed university, and beyond into skilled employment (UNESCO, 2017a, EGHE, 2018). Moreover, most lower and middle-income countries do not collect detailed disaggregated data to document access, retention, transfer/dropout, and successful graduation at HE level, especially by institution and discipline (see Chanana, 2007). Neither is there information on the onward journeys of students after they leave education Our research thus seeks to address these gaps.

The project consists of a range of quantitative and qualitative methods, including:

• secondary statistical data analysis of gendered patterns of HE participation and achievement, utilising available data in India and Rwanda, with UK data utilised for comparative purposes
• largescale primary survey data with STEM students in both countries.
• a range of in-depth qualitative methods, including in-depth interviews with three sets of participants in India and Rwanda (followed up a year later): first-year STEM students and final year STEM students at a university in each country and employees in a key STEM employer in each country

The project aims to utilise the findings for a range of materials/activities, including the development of gender-sensitive virtual support 'toolkits', developed in conjunction with student participants; and gender-sensitive CPD materials developed in conjunction with STEM academic and industry staff, tailored to appropriate national/regional contexts.

The Gendered Journeys project builds in part on the sharing of knowledge and ideas generated through a previous project also led by Barbara Read, the ESRC-funded network Examining Gender in Higher Education (EGHE): exploring gendered patterns of participation and success in STEM and beyond. A UK-African Countries Network.  One of the objectives of the project was in relation to the capacity-building of excellent early career researchers, and we are very pleased that amongst the Rwandan team for the Gendered Journeys project is co-I and ECR Jane Umutoni, who previously played a key role as co-I in the EGHE network. 

The project also benefits immensely from the expertise of  fellow co-investigators Dr Josephine Malonza from the University of Rwanda, Prof Manish Thakur and Dr Saikat Maitra from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, and Prof Srabani Maitra, Prof Bonnie Slade, and Prof Catherine Lido at the University of Glasgow. Now in our final year of the project, we are delighted have on board Research Associates Zy Evangelista, an expert on quantitative and mixed methods and data analysis, and Ana Miranda, an expert in the area of knowledge exchange.

We have also been able to capitalise on other links with GCRF that the University of Glasgow has built, and with which other team members are involved, including the work of the Centre for Sustainable Healthy Learning Cities and Neighbourhoods.

PI: Dr Barbara Read

CoIs:  Prof Catherine Lido; Dr Saikat Maitra (Indian Institute of Management Calcutta); Prof Srabani Maitra; Dr Josephine Malonza (University of Rwanda); Prof Bonnie Slade; Prof Manish Thakur (Indian Institute of Management Calcutta); Ms Jane Umutoni (University of Rwanda)

Start and end dates: 01 February 2020 to 29 December 2023 (including an 11-month no-cost extension reflecting delays due to the pandemic)

Economic and Social Research Council  - £986,320.12