Pour 63% des employeurs interrogés, développer l’approche employabilité/formation favorise l’amélioration de l’image sociale de l’entreprise. Ce sont les managers qui demeurent les relais d’information et qui sensibilisent leurs salariés à la formation professionnelle.

* capacité individuelle à acquérir et à maintenir les compétences nécessaires pour trouver ou conserver un emploi.

An alumni platform to share information, experiences and advice can boost student support and satisfaction, says Zahir Irani. The debate over higher tuition fees has naturally focused on the impact of rising costs on application rates and student expectations, but where are alumni relations in the post-tuition-rise mix?
No one in academia wants to see university education turned into a commodity but the reality of higher fees is that students are all too often working out how they can extract as much value as they can from an investment in their education. Pole position in league tables, new buildings, accreditations and the promise of an enhanced student experience will always attract new students – such factors are critical when it comes to universities seeking to be different. More...

By Peter Jones, guardian.co.uk. Something has gone horribly wrong with our education system. Earlier this year I read a damning report that showed the university dropout rate across Britain had soared. The number of students failing to complete their courses jumped from 28,210 to 31,755 last year – a rise of almost 13%. It was the first time since records began, a decade ago, that the rate had crept above 30,000.
Worryingly, that drop-out rate is likely to continue rocketing in coming years, while the demand for university courses in the UK is falling. Figures show that applications for degree courses are down by almost 9% in just 12 months. This is, in part, due to the rising costs of actually studying for a degree. But while a university course might be the right option for many young people, increasing numbers of students are realising the benefits of alternative forms of education.
Throughout my career, some of my best hires have been people who have bypassed the traditional route of university and learned their skills through apprenticeship schemes or alternative education courses. They have come to the workplace with a solid understanding of the real world and a steely determination to succeed. Those are the characteristics we need in order to build an entrepreneurial Britain. Knowledge-based apprenticeships kickstart careers. Just look at British fashion designer Karen Millen, for example, who learned her craft through an apprenticeship scheme. They can also generate sustainable economic growth: the National Audit Office found that for every £1 spent on apprenticeships £18 is generated for the economy.
I'm constantly blown away by the ambition and talent of this country's young people – many of whom elect not to attend university. Take these three examples I have worked with: 17-year-old Robert Nunn, who runs the Young Aviation Fund, a social enterprise that provides young people with funding to start a career in aviation.
Or 20-year-old Nick Bannister who has developed an educational toy called Mind Bloxx, which helps children to learn arithmetic, or 19-year-old Henna Mushtaq, who runs an Indian tattoo business and has patented her own henna machine. We need to equip more young people with the confidence and skills to turn their business dreams into reality. We need to kickstart Britain's economy by encouraging the next generation of Richard Bransons and Vivienne Westwoods to go for it in business.
For many young people on-the-job training and hands-on experience is the real route to employability, not a university education.
I'm determined to create a nation of "doers", to instil a go-getting approach in our young people. In today's tough climate, they need to create opportunities for themselves and have the confidence to make a job, not just take a job. Britain lacks that fundamental belief that anyone can make it. What we need is a British dream. Let's give young people the courage and ambition to go for it.

By Anna McHugh. Anna Bellamy-McIntyre's (HES, June 20) situation is similar to my own, but what response does Australia offer those humanities postgraduates who can neither find a job in universities nor are welcomed by the secondary education sector?
After migrating from Scotland in 1994, I scored 99.95 in my HSC. I took a first-class honours degree in English at the University of Sydney and an Australian Postgraduate Award funded me through a PhD there. I loved doing my degree, and at 24, I wasn't too upset when it became pretty clear that there was no job at the end of a doctorate about Chaucer.
Oxford seemed like a good idea, so I dragged myself and a long-suffering husband to England for another doctorate (in 15th century history, this time). I was thrilled to be given a junior research fellowship at Oxford, but less so when I found out that it came with the princely salary of £5000 ($7700). After 18 months of trying to live on that, I gave up and returned (without the husband) to Australia.
I enjoyed the teaching aspect of my fellowship, but I wanted to teach younger students (if you've ever taught Oxford undergraduates you'll know it's a largely over-rated experience). I decided that, if I worked and studied, my bank account could bear one last qualification. A GradDipEd by distance from UNE completed a string of letters longer than my own name.
I discovered quite quickly that if one PhD makes you undesirable, two are just plain unfortunate. State schools (at least in NSW) are a lot less impressed with high-flown academic experience; they want knowledge and use of current pedagogical theory. Very sensible, except that it's passion for the subject, and the personal experience which takes graduates to dizzy doctoral heights, that help teachers to connect with those students who most need to be inspired.
Independent schools weren't much better. Very few heads of department want a 33 year-old woman with two PhDs under them, even if she's as new to teaching as anyone 10years younger and as much in need of their help. I found this out in my first teaching job, which was nasty, brutish, and short.
I was (or rather, my qualifications were) offered a job teaching English in an independent boys' school in the inner west. I was the principal's project, much to the dismay of the head of department (a man older than me who apparently had no formal teaching qualifications). He left me alone with enough rope to hang myself and after a horrendous term, I almost did.
As an example of a bullying culture, it left Oxford in the shade. Unfortunately, it left me in the lurch and I'm now on the bench with no job and a portfolio of library cards to flip through.
Bellamy-McIntyre is right; you can let the lack of societal follow-through on the research they've funded make you jaded and disillusioned. My heart goes out to scientists who can only remain current in their by research if it's performed in expensive laboratory settings.
But humanities postgraduates are in a slightly different boat. Unemployed in my field after two PhDs, I've come to a few conclusions:
You write a doctoral thesis for yourself. 'Mnemonic theory in fourteenth-century poetry' isn't going to set the world on fire, but it interests and fulfils me. It's not a ticket to an academic position but a chance to investigate truth, wisdom, and virtue -- the things that learning was once about.
That said, the abstract skills you've developed will be useful in a great many jobs. You'll work smarter, faster, and probably harder. If you become a teacher, it'll help you see what the most exciting parts of your subject are. But you should be judicious and realistic about what you can offer and expect from your colleagues. PhDs may seem ten-a-penny now, but the majority doesn't have one (let alone two). If you cherished dreams of being grovelled to as Doctor Fantastic, you're likely to meet some resistance in a non-academic setting.
Get used to meeting society's self-centredness and contrariety. Unless you've researched the secret to eternal youth, you'll have to prove yourself to every new potential employer. You're a living paradox; overqualified but underskilled, you have valuable critical thinking skills but are expected to walk off any job that doesn't exercise them. So when someone wants you, be happy! Don't think of it as second-best to an academic job; (chances are, you won't have to publish half-baked stuff just to bump up your research points).
Remember that the academic industry is a wheel. Your field will come back into vogue, even if it looks slightly different. You can keep up with it by reading your peers and contributing sensible things yourself. This is the real test of your stamina and passion as a scholar: do you do it for love of your subject, or for your own glory?
Our generation could become very miserly towards our parents, which nibbles at our stipend of certainty and satisfaction even as it ages and demands our care. We could easily regret investing lonely, difficult, impecunious years in study with no return in home ownership, children, or careers.
I chased academic success for 15 years but only found myself as a scholar when schools and universities had no job for me. I study for love of my subject, in which I find a greater truth.
The flush of academic glory comes with the title and disappears with the funding. In love of your subject is wisdom and excellence, which no one can take from you. These belong to a person, not an institution, and are taken by them wherever they go.

Call for participants: DEHEMS conference on employability of graduates
The DEHEMS Consortium (‘Network for the Development of Higher Education Management Systems’) is holding a conference titled ‘Employability of Graduates & Higher Education Management Systems’. The conference will take place in Ljubljana (Slovenia), 27-28 September 2012.
At the conference, a number of international experts will present and discuss application of empirical employability data on key higher education developments. The speakers include prof. Ulrich Teichler (DE), prof. Robin Middlehurst (UK), prof. Wolfgang Mayrhofer (AT) and more than 20 others.
The topics covered include: Institutional higher educational management; Accreditation and re-accreditation of programmes; Career Centers; Enhancement of theory with practical work. The main aim is to explore: which factors determine a graduate’s early career success, and how higher education management systems take employability data and surveys into account, and how much are and should be evidence-driven.
The conference is free of charge, and you can register to the conference via online registration here.
You can download more information about the steering committee and keynote speakers here, and find more information on the conference website.

When preparing students for an uncertain future, universities need to add wisdom to the list of skills they develop in them, says Steven Schwartz.
In April, as David Docherty reports, the Australian government released its report Skills for all Australians. The report is the basis for the country's A$1.75bn (£1m) plan to reform vocational education and training. Reflecting the title, its 88 pages are crammed with references to skills: how, where and why to get them, and why both the individual and the country will benefit from having a more skilled workforce. The focus is on the acquisition of technical and practical skills in an economy "facing major generational change driven by the Asian century, new technology, and the shift to a low carbon economy".
Each year, it says, 300,000 businesses close down and another 300,000 start up. Annually, around 1 million workers change jobs, with a quarter of those also changing industries. New and innovative industries, including renewable and efficient energy, information technologies and the electronic arts and communications "are also driving the need for a new generation of highly skilled technically qualified workers".
The report is more about how vocational education and training (VET) is funded than about what specific skills students ought to learn. This is probably because the government does not know exactly what skills students will need in the future – how could it when change is so rapid? Still, it is possible to extract from the report some generic skills that will apply not just to VET students, but also to our university graduates who find themselves in a continuously shifting, changing, increasingly technological economy.
So what are the skills everyone should possess?
First up, future employees will find themselves in an economy buffeted by global economic forces and constant technological innovation. All employees, the report says, will be subject to the demands of new systems and technologies. Jobs will be created which do not exist now and existing jobs will require new skills, and there will be a need "to combine new operational skills with communication … teamwork and decision-making skills will intensify [and] the flexibility and resilience to change jobs, apply skills in different context and go on learning will be essential."
As economic change continues, workers will need not only specialist skills, but also: "An ability to quickly adapt and pick up new skills, to make the most of new opportunities." An aptitude for continuous learning will be vital: "Australian businesses will need the capacity to embrace technological and business process innovations … It is becoming more important than ever for business to upskill or retrain their workers in order to lift productivity and to adapt to changing competitive pressures."
So we can boil this down to a few vital attributes. Graduates ought to be:
• flexible
• resilient
• adaptable
• team players
• technologically savvy
• able to apply skills in different contexts
• life-long learners
• able to make the most of new opportunities
It's a good list, but there's another attribute I would add – wisdom. Many young people imagine wisdom to be an impediment, stopping them from taking chances. Instead I think that what wisdom gives is the ability to get more out of your experience than you would otherwise. It is a combination of having read widely and merging that with the experiences you have as you go through life. If the point of the university is to prepare students to learn from their experiences, then wisdom is a key characteristic we have to develop in our students as they seek employment.
Macquarie University has adapted its curriculum to ensure our students are exposed to a broad education so that when they graduate they are the adaptable, flexible, responsive, team-focused and wise people employers are demanding.
That's my assessment. Are there other skills that all graduates should possess?
Steven Schwartz is vice-chancellor of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To get more articles like this direct to your inbox, sign up for free to become a member of the Higher Education Network.

The debate around employability and skills is important, but we must not lose sight of the critical and theoretical talent universities are also required to deliver, says David Docherty.
Lord Heseltine, to whom I once awarded an honorary doctorate in business administration when I was chairman of the University of Bedfordshire, has been asked by the government to conduct an audit of the UK's industrial performance. Even back then it was obvious he had an insight into the economic power of universities broader than many of his colleagues (on all sides of both Houses). In his introductory speech to the Lords, he said: "We have some of the best companies in the world – they are out there winning every day. But is our average performance good enough and how can the underperforming tail be encouraged or persuaded to catch up?"
He is currently reviewing his remit and I hope he finds time to turn his fertile mind to joined-up thinking about the UK's talent base and the pipelines from schools into universities and colleges and out into businesses. Because there is, frustratingly, a great deal that still needs to be done. The global economy is moving at the pace of the internet, while our education policies are too often moving at the speed of pigeon post.
Across the world, governments are trying to make sense of how to be successful when this recession (as I've taken to calling the post-Lehman's mess) is over. The Australian government has just released its new report on skills for all Australians. It's called, with a stunning degree of Aussie straightforwardness, Skills For All Australians, and is a blueprint for a $1.7bn programme of renewal for their vocational education and training (VET).
Vet (handy acronym by the way) is obviously vital, but in worrying ways reports like this, and the thinking that underlie it, are still not joining the dots between the problem and the big picture solutions. Modern economies may be built by skills but they will succeed by expertise.
If a skill is a repeatable process in a predictable environment, expertise is the application of theory to practice. This distinction (even if in reality it is a continuum) is vitally important in setting out the mission of universities in helping to deliver economic prosperity and a good society. At its most basic, as Gavin Patterson, CEO of BT retail noted in Great Expectations, a recent CIHE report: "The majority of technical skills being taught in schools and universities will be defunct by the time young people are 10 years into their careers."
Skills for All Australians sets out the challenge for the Commonwealth to respond to a "major generational change driven by the Asian century, new technology, and the shift to a low carbon economy." Consequently, Australians will need to combine new operational skills with communication, teamwork and decision-making skills will intensify, the flexibility and resilience to change jobs, apply skills in different context and go on learning will be essential.
This emphasis on the vital importance of non-academic skills to employability and productivity will come as no surprise to anyone in the UK higher education system, where this awareness is deepening with every piece of analysis, and where universities are setting out a vision of mass participation in placements, internships and a range of business engagements. But as we quite rightly develop this agenda, we must not lose sight of the talent universities are really put on earth to deliver. They must provide us with people with the ability to continually learn, to think critically and theoretically, to be reflective and reflexive, to innovate and break the status quo, and to navigate in the unstable waters of the global economy.
The way to drive the underperforming tail is to ensure that businesses get the quality of expert leadership they need. But that is a tale for another day.
Dr David Docherty is chief executive of the Council for Industry and Higher Education.

EMPLOYABILITY is top of the agenda for universities and businesses. More sandwich courses with one-year industry placements and 12-week summer internships for students are two of the recommendations of a Government-backed report released last week.
The Review of Business-University Collaboration by Sir Tim Wilson focuses on links between higher education and employers. It calls for funding incentives to increase the number of courses in which students spend a year in industry.
I’m delighted such links are being encouraged and employability of students is recognised as a national priority. It echoes my faculty’s own commitment.
The Wilson Report states the “evidence that a placement year improves employability opportunities is strong,” and “lack of work experience appears as a key barrier to young people, including graduates, in securing employment”.
What it does not say is that those students who take part in placements are more likely to graduate with a higher class degree than those who don’t, but that’s certainly been the case in my faculty.
Learning for a purpose is paramount at university. Placements are an important feature of many of our degrees – undergraduate and postgraduate. Securing involvement and commitment from business and industry to expand placement opportunities is pivotal for students and in turn for employers and the future economic confidence of the UK.
We have introduced employability modules in each year of our business and management degrees to help create graduates who can be most effective in a job. Sunderland is the only UK university to my knowledge which tackles employability through face-to-face and group discussions at each level of a business degree.
It’s too late to start thinking “what next?” at graduation. By the time our students graduate, we expect them to have a clear idea of their strengths and career direction.
No one should be trapped in a job they hate for many years. Year-long work placements, summer internships and career-related initiatives, including employability modules, all help to give students the information, understanding and approach their chosen employers will appreciate.
Close links between business and universities stoke innovation, create important research partnerships and nurture excellent future employees. They have never been more important.
:: Professor Bernie Callaghan is dean of the faculty of business and law, University of Sunderland.

ERASMUS MUNDUS, Clustering Erasmus Mundus Masters Courses and Attractiveness Projects. LOT 2: EMPLOYABILITY SURVEY RESULTS.
Enquête sur l'insertion professionnelle des étudiants Erasmus Mundus – rapport et recommandations, réalisée par MKW et le Céreq
Dans le cadre d'un appel d'offres, la Commission européenne a financé en 2010 et 2011 une enquête menée par MKW et le Céreq sur l'insertion professionnelle des étudiants en masters Erasmus Mundus. Les résultats, analyses et recommandations émanant de cette enquête sont désormais publiés. Téléchargez le rapport de l'enquête. Téléchargez les recommandations de l'enquête.
PRACTICAL GUIDELINES
The Erasmus Mundus programme (EM) aims to promote European higher education, to help improve and enhance the career prospects of students and to promote intercultural understanding through cooperation with third countries, in accordance with EU external policy objectives, in order to contribute to the sustainable development of third countries in the field of higher education. For this purpose the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency commissioned an in-depth quality assessment of Erasmus Mundus Masters Courses (EMMCs) and related projects to enhance its attractiveness, among which the present study on employability of Erasmus Mundus students and graduates.
Erasmus Mundus, actually, can be regarded as an educational programme to meet the challenges arisen from dynamic and international oriented labour markets. In the framework of Europe 2020’s aim “to enhance the performance and international attractiveness of Europe's higher education institutions and raise the overall quality of […] education and training […], combining both excellence and equity”1 Erasmus Mundus can be seen as one important measure, providing high level education for mobile and high skilled students from all over the world in trans-national learning environments covering leading faculties of all academic disciplines offering European double, multiple or joint degrees. Simultaneously, the programme poses high requirements, comprising a highly selective quality recruitment procedure, a time-intensive curriculum, a multitude of educational systems and languages, which demands students’ adaptability.
The present Guidelines offer a means to explore, individually or collaboratively, the challenges Erasmus Mundus Masters Courses have to deal with in bringing their approved excellence in research and teaching in accordance with improving their students’ position on the labour market. Moreover, discovered examples of good practice can lead to practical recommendations of concrete measures how to provide students with prerequisites and resources that make them “employable”. The Practical Guidelines should thus enable Erasmus Mundus Masters Courses as well as universities willing to start a EM programme to reappraise existing course designs in order to develop intrinsic and selfcontained strategies enhancing employability.
Nevertheless, this publication is in no ways foreseen to outline a tailor-made approach to enhance employability, nor as an exhaustive “to-do-list”. Due to the high diversity of the Masters programmes, not every measure can be applied according to the same logic. Notwithstanding the remarkable level that many EMMCs already exhibit, they have been launched at disparate times and to different preconditions and some measures are still “under construction”. Future progress in the area of employability will therefore be exciting to be monitored and continuously updated.
To base the practical guidelines on a scientific point of view, the present document starts with introducing the undertaken quantitative and qualitative survey methods and its most important results. For each of the topics treated, the major findings are summarized and strengthened by a related graph or chart. Afterwards, every topic is illustrated by an example of good practice from one EMMC, which have been gathered during the qualitative interviews and the Erasmus Mundus Employability Workshop, identifying recommendable strategies and solutions. It has to be mentioned that this good practice neither depicts the entire scope of activities of each EMMC, nor is exhaustive for the whole topic. Therefore, each section ends with recommendations drawn from the entire sample of interviews. Finally, a section of general recommendations will conclude these guidelines.
Téléchargez le rapport de l'enquête. Téléchargez les recommandations de l'enquête.

Enquête Eurobaromètre sur l'employabilité des diplômés: l'importance du travail d'équipe, de l'adaptabilité, de la communication et des compétences linguistiques pour les employeurs
Une nouvelle enquête menée auprès des employeurs européens montre que, lors du recrutement de diplômés, les compétences dites «non techniques» ont autant d'importance que les compétences techniques spécifiques et les compétences informatiques. Une large majorité des employeurs interrogés a répondu que la capacité à travailler en équipe (98 %), la faculté d'adaptation à de nouvelles situations (97%), les compétences en matière de communication (96 %) et la connaissance de langues étrangères (67%) jouaient un rôle important pour le recrutement. Près de la moitié des entreprises très présentes sur le marché international considère les compétences linguistiques comme le principal atout pour l'avenir.
Androulla Vassiliou, commissaire à l'éducation, à la culture, au multilinguisme et à la jeunesse, a déclaré: «Ces résultats traduisent clairement l'importance que les employeurs accordent à la maîtrise d'une large palette de compétences tant techniques que transversales. Les récentes initiatives de la Commission «Jeunesse en mouvement» et «Une stratégie pour des compétences nouvelles et des emplois» visent à aider les Européens à déterminer et à acquérir les qualifications et les compétences recherchées sur le marché de l'emploi. Nous nous sommes engagés à appuyer les efforts déployés par les États membres pour améliorer l'enseignement supérieur et professionnel, ainsi que pour promouvoir les possibilités de travailler et d'étudier à l'étranger, expériences qui dotent les jeunes précisément des compétences les plus appréciées des employeurs».
Une meilleure compréhension des besoins des employeurs contribue à définir les politiques européennes en matière d'éducation et d'emploi. L'enquête Eurobaromètre montre que l'expérience professionnelle constitue un atout majeur pour 87% des recruteurs. Invités à choisir une mesure que les universités devraient prendre pour améliorer l'employabilité de leurs diplômés, 39% d'entre eux ont mentionné l'intégration d'un stage de spécialisation dans le cursus d'études. Pourtant, seules 12% des entreprises disent collaborer régulièrement avec des universités pour la conception des cursus et des programmes pédagogiques. La coopération est toutefois plus développée dans le contexte du recrutement des diplômés d'universités. À la question de savoir quelles sont les modalités les plus appropriées de coopération avec les universités, les employeurs privilégient clairement les programmes de stage (51%), devant le recrutement direct dans les universités.
Un marché de l'emploi de plus en plus concurrentiel
Pour qui est à la recherche d'un emploi aujourd'hui, la question de la concurrence sur le marché du travail se pose dans une perspective européenne, et plus seulement nationale ou locale. L'enquête a montré que plus d'un quart (28%) des employeurs avaient recruté des diplômés d'autres pays européens et 18% des postulants venus d'autres parties du monde. 41% des personnes interrogées ont motivé le choix d'un candidat étranger par la volonté de trouver le meilleur talent possible. Parmi les entreprises très présentes sur le marché international, 48% considèrent que les compétences linguistiques sont les plus importantes pour l'avenir. Pour cette enquête, plus de 7 000 recruteurs d'entreprises publiques et privées de 31 pays (UE-27, Norvège, Islande, Croatie et Turquie) ont été interrogés par téléphone, entre le 30 août et le 7 septembre 2010. Pour en savoir plus: MEMO/10/638, Enquête Eurobaromètre sur la perception des employeurs de l'employabilité des diplômés.