Last week saw ESCalate’s third student conference take place at Liverpool Hope University. Staff and students from a range of Education disciplines came together to discuss the very timely themes of enterprise and employability.
Dr Martin Carey, chief executive of Business Gateway & Urban Hope at Liverpool Hope welcomed us to a very appropriate venue – the new EDEN (education and enterprise) building, home to the university’s education faculty but also designed to be used by Liverpool’s wider education community for continuing professional development and to enable businesses to benefit from the knowledge, research and expertise of the university.
Dr Wendy Bignold, Vice Dean of Education at Liverpool Hope University set the scene for the day with her opening plenary session. She encouraged us to view enterprise as something broader than simply a business or industry-focused activity, as activity that is purposeful and creative and involves developing and applying innovative approaches to practical situations. Linking this notion of the ‘enterprising student’ to employability and education, Wendy went on to discuss how employers wanted employees who would not just fit in to their workplaces but who would be able to transform their organisations. Such students need to have a vision of the future – of their future selves and the possible futures of the organisations in which they work – a vision that Wendy saw as at the heart of what enterprise education could offer. She also related this vision to the work of education in supporting and nurturing traditions of a civil society: students who had been transformed themselves in the course of their education are themselves equipped with transformative potential that they can bring to the workplace.
Two parallel sessions in the morning and afternoon offered delegates some choices in the morning and afternoon sessions, and we were particularly pleased that several sessions involved students themselves presenting - offering hands-on practice of employable skills in the process. One of the themes that I spotted running across several sessions was the exploration of employability for students studying Education, a subject that has sometimes been thought of as a vocational course inevitably leading to becoming a teacher. Namrata Rao and Anesa Hosein shared data showing that while most students on an Education Studies module at Liverpool Hope wanted to be teachers, only 13% actually were working as teachers after graduating, and they worked with students to expand their definitions of what it is to be an “education professional”. Students Bryony-Anne Bennett and Jennifer Cahill from Liverpool Hope showed how, through working with Lynne McCann, they had found opportunities to use their knowledge and skills of education in ‘real world’ projects, and were planning on setting up their own business to continue working in the world of education, though not as school teachers.
The importance of reflection and the emotional aspects of learning and working were also themes running through some of the presentations I was able to see. Work-based learning can be very challenging and Fran Myers of the Open University showed how students who vented their frustration and confusion on online message boards often had very different perspectives of their course upon later reflection, while Shirley Potts of Liverpool Hope drew attention to the importance and challenge of honest reflection in coming to a more nuanced understanding of the issues for students on disability studies courses.
Dr Paul Redmond, Head of Careers & Employability at the University of Liverpool provided a memorable and engaging keynote presentation, opening with an unsettling set of figures he termed ‘crunchonomics’, including the fact that there are currently 70 graduates being produced for every ‘graduate job’ available. This particularly harsh economic moment has only served to intensify the ‘war for talent’, he argued, in which employers have at their disposal an increasing range of ‘weapons of mass rejection’. Getting noticed and getting employed is increasingly competitive for current graduates, and Paul pointed out a sharp contrast between the desired goals of Generation Y (born after 1978) and the realities of the labour market. In this market, it’s not just the hard currencies of educational credentials and skills that count, but the soft currencies: the social and cultural capital of who you know, where you went to university, how you dress and your extra-curricular activities that mark you out as ‘employable’ in certain sectors. Creating a convincing narrative that draws together these hard and soft currencies (and – if you’re a man – avoiding shirts with pockets) is the challenge for today’s graduates.
Joe Gazdula, Lynne McCann, Helen Jamieson and Leanne Thompson pulled the day together in a closing plenary panel session, offering a hopeful note in spite of the current economic outlook, looking for what opportunities may be offered by the recession. There were some questions about the importance of volunteering and extra-curricular activities for employability and enterprise, and whether, if volunteering is embedded in the curriculum is it still voluntary (and when does volunteering become exploitation if we look at the current debate about internships). While we might traditionally have thought of education as a subject only for those with a vocation to teach, this conference showed how employability and enterprise are certainly not strangers to these education staff and students.
Presentations from speakers, including the keynotes, will be available from the event page on the ESCalate website in the next week or so.
A big thank you to Liverpool Hope for hosting the event and to all our speakers and delegates for a very interesting and enjoyable day.
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