Major-based undergraduate curriculum as an obstacle to graduate employability development

Abstract

ABSTRACT To tackle the problem of graduate employability (GE), higher education researchers and practitioners are suggesting the inclusion of employability modules in university curricula. However, the orthodoxy of the major-based undergraduate curriculum (MBUC) has rarely been challenged in the GE literature. Drawing on Clarke’s (2018) [Clarke, M. (2018). Rethinking graduate employability: The role of capital, individual attributes and context. Studies in Higher Education, 43(11), 1923–1937. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2017.1294152] integrated employability model, this paper explores how MBUC affects undergraduate students’ GE development. The data were 27 interviews with undergraduates majoring in Portuguese at six Chinese universities. Findings show that the MBUC weakens students’ perceived employability by cultivating a single rather than compound skill set, limiting their social circles and, therefore, horizons for action and delaying their career self-management. More directly, it affects GE in some cases by overproducing a homogeneously skilled workforce. We argue that in many fields of the current world of work, the MBUC may have contradicted its original, and once achieved, goal of enhancing GE for a particular profession; rather, in practice, it has become an obstacle to GE development.