Making sense of ‘graduate employability’ in Hong Kong: a contextualized analysis of experience and interpretations of graduates of self-financing higher education institutions

ABSTRACT

Declining employment prospects of graduates have been reported in the international literature and in Hong Kong. This casts doubts on the ‘employability’ of graduates of an expanding higher education sector. Yet, published patterns and trends of graduate employment outcomes do not tell us much about the contextualised processes that ‘match’ or ‘mismatch’ graduates’ qualifications with ‘appropriate’ graduate jobs. This paper addresses this research gap through examining lived experience and subjectivities of college/university-to-work transition of 10 graduates of self-financing degree-awarding institutions in Hong Kong, which were derived from a study of 40 local young workers in 2018. Drawing upon ‘positioning’ and ‘processual’ perspectives on ‘employability’, this paper sheds light on the nebulous, mutually constituted nature of the skills demanded by employers in workplace. Also, highlighting the tensions discerned in interview narratives, it elucidates the difficulties for graduates to present their skills as ‘directly’ transferable to the workplace. Graduates’ interpretations of (their) ‘employability’ reveal the differential values attached to (‘technical’ vs. ‘non-technical’) skills, (degree vs. sub-degree) qualifications and (self-financing vs. publicly funded) institutions constructed in the specific context of local higher education development. Implications for further research, assessment of higher education functioning and career services are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• graduate employability
• college/university-to-work transition
• self-financing higher education
• workplace
• Hong Kong

Acknowledgments

The work described in this paper was fully supported by a grant from the Katie Shu Sui Pui Charitable Trust – Research and Publication Fund (KS 2017/2.1).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In Hong Kong, the privately-funded, ‘self-financing’ higher education sector complements its publicly-funded counterpart in broadening and diversifying opportunities and choices for further education (Legislative Council Panel on Education 2012). The sector offers degree programmes, ‘top-up’ degree programmes (equivalent to the third and fourth years of a university degree) and two-year ‘sub-degree’ programmes (equivalent to the first and second years of a university degree) (Wong et al. 2016, 456–457).

2. The term ‘college/university-to-work-transition’ is used in this paper to describe what is often termed ‘school-to-work transition’ in the international literature. In Hong Kong, there are twenty-two degree-awarding higher education institutions. Among them are eleven universities, seven colleges, three institutes and one academy (as of 27 September 2019, according to the Education Bureau).

3. Specifics are not disclosed to protect the anonymity of the interviewees.

4. Pseudonyms are used.

5. ‘Current’ denotes what was reported at the time of interview.

6. Specifics are not disclosed to protect the anonymity of the interviewees.

Additional information

Funding

The work described in this paper was fully supported by a grant from the Katie Shu Sui Pui Charitable Trust Research and Publication Fund [KS 2017/2.1].

Notes on contributors

Beatrice Oi-Yeung Lam

Dr Beatrice Oi-yeung Lam is Assistant Professor of School of Arts and Social Sciences of the Open University of Hong Kong. She is interested in researching the ways in which inequality is produced, especially in relation to education and the family. Email: [email protected].

Hei-hang Hayes Tang

Dr Hei-hang Hayes Tang is Assistant Professor of Department of Education Policy and Leadership of the Education University of Hong Kong. His fields of expertise are education policy, higher education, academic profession and youth studies. His research focuses on the sociological role of higher education in relation to education governance and policy innovation especially in East Asian contexts.