The local embeddedness of graduates’ education-job mismatch and of lifelong learning policies for its overcoming

ABSTRACT

The article’s aim is twofold: to outline the specificity of the embeddedness approach and to explore the embeddedness of graduates’ education-job mismatch and the formation of lifelong learning policies. The study is based on both quantitative and qualitative data, obtained from the Bulgarian Universities Ranking System, and from interviews with experts and young adults engaged in a lifelong learning programme. The analysis uses multilevel modelling. It also relies on mapping lifelong learning policies in Bulgaria through a thematic content analysis. The article argues that the misbalances for highly educated people on the labour market mirror structural problems in the economy and the educational system. The argument is reflected in the historical and structural embeddedness of graduates’ education-job mismatches and the lifelong learning policies applied to overcome this. The results show that the extent of vertical education-job mismatch depends on the different profiles of higher education institutions and professional fields; they also demonstrate different ways in which the embeddedness approach could help shed new light on, and critically assess, lifelong learning policies. The findings reveal a differentiation between national and local levels of lifelong learning policy towards graduates and that regional policies are actively embedded in local contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Embeddedness approach
• lifelong learning policies
• higher education
• education-job mismatch
• Bulgaria

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Eurostat, Code lfsa_urgaed (Assessed on 14 June 2018).

2. This indicator shows the share of young (aged 25–34), tertiary education (ISCED 5 or 6) graduates employed in posts not included in categories of managers (ISCO 1), professionals (ISCO 2), or technicians and associate professionals (ISCO 3).

3. CEDEFOP http://skillspanorama.cedefop.europa.eu/en/indicators/overqualified-tertiary-graduates,

http://skillspanorama.cedefop.europa.eu/en/indicators/over-qualification-rate?field_date_value_filter=&field_countries_tid=6 (Accessed on 14 June 2018).

4. The term ‘embeddedness’ was coined by Karl Polanyi (1957) in his analysis of economic activities in non-market and market societies.

5. The terms ‘active embeddedness’ and ‘obligated embeddedness’ were suggested by Liu and Dicken (2006) in an article discussing how the investments of transnational corporations can be shaped to meet the state’s objectives. We borrow the terms but use them with different meanings.

6. http://www.regionalprofiles.bg/var/docs/profiles_2017/Blagoevgrad_2017.pdf.

7. http://www.investbulgaria.com/Blagoevgrad.php.

8. http://rsvu.mon.bg/rsvu3/?locale=en.

9. http://rsvu.mon.bg/rsvu3/?locale=en.

10. These interviews were carried out within a Horizon 2020 project (Young Adulllt 693167). Only part of them for Blagoevgrad was used for the present article as the other interviews refer to another programme.

11. A population whose mother tongue is Bulgarian and whose religion is Islam.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme [ENLIVEN 693989,Young Adulllt 693167].

Notes on contributors

Pepka Boyadjieva

Pepka Boyadjieva is Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and Honorary Professor of the Sociology of Education at the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom. Her research focuses on higher education, university development, educational inequalities, lifelong learning, and university/school to work transitions.

Petya Ilieva-Trichkova

Petya Ilieva-Trichkova is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Her research interests include educational inequalities, social justice, higher education, adult education, and graduate employability.

Valentina Milenkova

Valentina Milenkova is Professor at the Sociology Department of South-West University “Neofit Rilski”, Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria. Her research interests focus on lifelong learning, social inequalities, ethnicity, quality of education, and social communities.

Rumiana Stoilova

Rumiana Stoilova is Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and Chair of the Bulgarian Sociological Association. Her research is focused on social stratification, inequalities in life course perspective, middle class, gender studies and intersectionality, and welfare state regimes.