ABSTRACT
This chapter presents findings about the relationship between Future track respondents' participation in employability-related activities and indicators of their subsequent job satisfaction, optimism about their long term career prospects and skills development. It focuses on the rationale for employability-related activities in higher education (HE), including the potential impact of the teaching excellence and student outcomes framework (TEF) on policy and practice in this area. Higher education providers (HEP) have responded vigorously to the need to support students' transition into working life. This is despite HEPs being unable to control the operation of graduate labour market, the vagaries of which impact directly on the assessment of their performance. The whole notion of graduate employability is fundamentally employer-centric and assumes deficit in students that HEPs are well-positioned to remedy. The development of career management skills such as career planning, occupational awareness and career decision-making in graduates is sometimes positioned as the outcome of effective employability learning in HE.
