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This article explores the involvement of industry professionals and barriers to their involvement in Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) in three Vietnamese public universities that implement the Profession-Oriented Higher Education (POHE) framework. Thematic analysis of 15 in-depth interviews and three focus groups revealed that only WIL activities which were organised at the workplace resulted in industry professionals actively participating and contributing to students' work-based learning.

Findings revealed that the involvement of industry professionals in designing WIL learning content and assessing students' workplace performance was limited. The university departments' focus on selecting industry professionals working in managing positions, the shortage of support from university departments and industry professionals' time constraints were identified as major barriers to the professional involvement in WIL. This indicated that industry professionals were not provided with favourable conditions to participate in WIL and thus, a lot of work needs to be done from the university side to welcome and involve professionals deeply in WIL. The article calls for more government support and greater initiative from Vietnamese universities to improve the university-industry linkage and the professional-lecturer relationship that lead to better WIL quality.

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This working paper aims to identify the characteristics that support employability in Australia and to assist understanding of employability within the Australian economy. It begins with a brief review of some of the available economics and education literature and continues by considering a set of case study findings regarding employee characteristics as sought by Australian employers. Show less

Over-education has been demonstrated to be frequent and persistent across countries. [The authors] study whether entrepreneurial skills are a competency that helps tertiary education graduates to obtain a good job match. [The authors] analyze two possibilities: the role of entrepreneurial skills in avoiding over-education in the first job, and in exiting over-education in their early career. [The authors] do the analysis for Spain and the Netherlands, two countries that differ significantly in the degree of tracking in their educational system and the education-labor market linkages.

[The authors] find that entrepreneurial skills help avoiding over-education in the first job and exiting from over-education only in Spain. Entrepreneurial skills do not seem to affect the probability of over-education in the Netherlands, where the education system is less flexible. Overall, [these] results give support to those policies promoting the development of entrepreneurial skills in the Spanish education system.

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For both women and men, being able to harness the potential of the digital transformation is a keystone of more sustainable and inclusive economies and societies. However, women are still lagging behind in their ability to access, use, and afford digital tools. They are also facing cultural barriers and stereotypes that affect their expectations and may lead them to choose career paths that are not necessarily those that the increasingly digitalised and interconnected world rewards. Early and systemic policy interventions, particularly in the education systems, but also those aimed at changing cultural norms and tackling stereotypes, are crucial to address these gaps and avoid them being further accentuated as the digital transformation unfolds. This OECD report has been prepared at the request of the Chilean Government in the context of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Chile's 2019 Women, SMEs and Inclusive Growth Priority. It aims to strengthen the evidence base in support of APEC discussions on understanding and bridging the digital gender gap in APEC economies.

The report explores the root causes of the gender digital divide; the demands of the workforce for digital skills of women; the skills needed to succeed in the digital transformation and what this implies for women; and the role of education on building skills for the digital era and bridging the digital gender divide. The report further proposes an education-centered future-looking strategy which identifies existing evidence relevant to bridging the digital gender gap and outlines possible actions in support of policymaking aimed to narrow the digital gender divide in APEC economies. The report proposes a multifaceted approach and is articulated around the following key areas of analysis: (1) the digital gender divide in APEC economies: understanding the root causes; (2) skills for the digital era; (3) thriving in the digital era: the importance of education and curriculum design; and (4) main conclusions and policy implications.

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Using a randomised experiment, we show that providing better information about prospective jobs to vocational trainees can improve their placement outcomes. The study setting is the vocational training programme [Deen Dayal Upadhyay Grameen Kaushalya Yojana] DDU-GKY in India. We find that including in the training two information sessions about placement opportunities make trainees 17 per cent more likely to stay in the jobs in which they are placed. We argue that this effect is likely driven by improved selection into training. As a result of the intervention, trainees that are over-optimistic about placement jobs are more likely to drop out before placement.

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Women around the world often perform jobs with minimal skill requirements, and encounter few opportunities for learning and advancement. Governments and development agencies try to improve women's skills through vocational and business training programmes. The primary objective of this systematic review, based on a search executed in September 2016, is to synthesize the evidence on the effects of vocational and business training programmes that aim to improve women's labour market outcomes. The secondary objective is to improve our understanding of the barriers to and facilitators of vocational and business training effectiveness for women, and how these barriers and facilitators operate.

The review highlights several important implications for practice and policy. The quantitative evidence suggests that vocational training had positive but small effects on employment, formal employment, and earnings. In addition, the review found that business training combined with other programme components had positive effects on self-employment, as well as small but positive effects on sales and profits. However, these relatively small effects may be insufficient to justify scaling up vocational or business training programmes. The review found some evidence of a positive relationship between the effects of vocational training programmes and the inclusion of a stronger gender focus, life skills training, or an internship in addition to the vocational training. These results suggest that including a gender focus, life skills training, or internships could strengthen vocational training programmes. However, it is important to test these mechanisms further through rigorous mixed-methods studies with multiple treatment arms.

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The successful settlement of migrants in New Zealand depends largely on how well migrants integrate economically. Migrants' economic integration can be measured in several ways, including through their labour force participation rates and through their income and earnings. Understanding how migrants interact with the labour market is central to designing effective immigration policy and settlement services. How readily they find work and the skills they bring are significant factors in maximising economic benefits to New Zealand, as well as for migrants achieving independence and building a successful life in New Zealand. This report presents findings from the Longitudinal Immigration Survey: New Zealand (LisNZ). Interviews with migrants occurred six months, 18 months, and 36 months after migrants were granted permanent residence. These findings draw upon responses from the 5,144 migrants who took part in all three waves of the survey. Respondents were approved for residence from November 2004 to October 2005, and final interviews (Wave 3) were carried out between November 2007 and October 2009. The research focuses on the key factors related to labour force participation, including immigration approval category, region of origin, and prior New Zealand work experience. It also examines the role of other demographics including age and sex, English language proficiency, qualifications, region of settlement and household composition. Overall, the results are positive for migrants in the New Zealand labour market, particularly regarding the contribution of the skilled migrant program.

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Pre-professional identity is a complex phenomenon spanning awareness of and connection with the skills, qualities, behaviours, values and standards of a student's chosen profession, as well as one's understanding of professional self in relation to the broader general self. It is an important, yet under-explored, aspect of graduate employability and can influence academic success, well-being and productivity. This study investigates the role of Work-Integrated Learning (WIL), more specifically work placements, in developing pre-professional identity among undergraduates. It uses qualitative data, in the form of structured reflections, gathered over two time periods from 105 business students in a Western Australian university.

Findings indicate that work placements can offer a valuable platform for fostering identity construction. Students use the experience to make sense of their intended profession through observing, questioning and interacting with seasoned professionals. Appraising and reflecting on their experience, through learning activities and assessment, are highlighted as important elements of placement design and critical for students to question and make sense of what they observed and learned. Strategies are presented for industry and education practitioners to enhance pre-professional identity development among undergraduates. The study underlines the important role of work placements in preparing students for graduate-level employment, beyond the traditional focus on non-technical skill development and the application of disciplinary knowledge.

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LifeSkills created with Barclays has developed an impressive array of resources which support the teaching of employability, career education, to give young people the skills to get work ready. At present these resources have been targeted at 11-19 year olds. This research set out to find out what resources would be appropriate to those at university or leaving university. The research comprised the design and launch of an online survey aimed at careers and employability practitioners in higher education (HE) during May 2015. HE careers and employability services draw upon a wide range of resources to support employability skills development in students. This research aimed to document what is currently in use, and importantly to identify what kinds of resources careers and employability services would welcome, and whether there are any consistent patterns by type of institution.

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Part-time participation in higher education (HE) by people already in employment potentially represents an important means of skills updating and improvement for the UK economy. In particular, combining prior work experience and part-time HE study could help to increase the supply of highly-educated people with the types of 'employability skills' that are widely sought by employers. A further attraction of this mode of skills development is that it minimises absence from work, with individuals investing their own time in study. In this context there is considerable interest in learning more about the extent to which UK employers provide support with course fees and other costs of part-time HE study - a form of support which is widespread in the United States. In this report we draw on recent surveys of part-time students and their employers in the UK in order to investigate the extent and nature of employer support for part-time HE study and the perceived advantages and disadvantages of this kind of study for the organisations concerned.

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