Enhancing graduate employability attributes and capabilities formation: a service-learning approach

ABSTRACT

Graduates’ employment outcomes remain a critical factor for all stakeholders in the sector. Positive graduate outcomes enhance students’ aspirations for a university, accountability to the government for funding, and as a proxy for university quality and curriculum relevance. However, with high unemployment rate, graduates feel unprepared for the world of work, while employers perceive graduates as lacking core employability soft-skills. Academics on their part struggle to integrate employability skills in the curriculum. Furthermore, globalisation, diversity in society and workplace, call for graduates with social and humane values. Informed by the Capability Approach, we argue that community service-learning (CSL) has the potential to enhance graduate employability skills while fostering human capabilities. From the analysis of qualitative data, critical thinking, communication skills, and teamwork; and capability for affiliation and dimension of agency were identified. We conclude that CSL enhances graduate outcomes beyond the narrow premise of training graduates solely for employment.

KEYWORDS:

• Employability
• community service-learning
• capability approach
• capabilities
• South Africa

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous peer reviewers for their detailed and constructive comments, which we believe have significantly contributed to the final quality of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Young people who were born in democratic South Africa, i.e. from 1994 onwards.

2 The whole person entails educating and preparing students' body, mind, emotions, spirituality, and sexuality to live in a world of profound change (London 2003).

3 We understand the complexities, dynamics, potentials and limitations of CSL. However, in this paper we approach the CSL from a pedagogical standpoint with the aim of exploring its contribution to fostering an expansive version of employability.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation SARCHi Chair in Higher Education and Human Development [Grant U86540].