ABSTRACT
Education as a route to social mobility, and economic prosperity remains a key tenet of twenty-first-century UK government policy. This includes higher education (HE), which under both the previous Labour (1997-2010) and current Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition governments is promoted as extremely important for both individuals and national prosperity in a high-skills globalised economy. In England, young peoples’ participation in HE increased from some 15% in 1988 (Chowdry et al. 2010) to 47% by 2010/11 (Department for Business, Information and Skills 2012). However, successful transition into well-paid employment in graduate labour
*Corresponding author. Email: richard.waller@uwe.ac.uk
I and Richard Wal erc
markets remains uncertain. Brown and colleagues’ work argues that labour markets have not kept up with the increasing number of graduates, resulting in ever greater competition for graduate jobs (Brown 2003; Brown and Hesketh 2004; Brown and Tannock 2009; Brown, Lauder, and Ashton 2011). Getting a degree is no longer enough, and students are urged to mobilise different forms of ‘capital’ during their undergraduate study to enhance their future social and economic positioning (Tomlinson 2008).
