The role of sports participation on graduate employability

Abstract

Youth unemployment around the world poses a major challenge to today’s societies. One of the basic functions of education is to cultivate people to meet the needs of the labour market. Employability has been a challenge for graduates of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) due to their failure to meet the current labour market expectations. Human capital theory assumes that education determines the marginal productivity of labour, and that marginal productivity determines earnings. Those who attend university and obtain graduate-level status will, according to the theory, reap benefits for themselves and for the wider society, due to the skills and knowledge they can offer. Secondary data was used to collect data from various published sources. It was found that engagement in sport is viewed as a sound investment from the perspectives of various groups, with examples highlighting how sport provided ‘added value’ beyond subject-specific qualifications. Skills that graduates described that they had gained from sport were the same skills that employers said that they were looking for in prospective employees. Despite the importance of sports students are facing a number of challenges when wishing to engage themselves in sports. Keywords: Sports participation, Graduate employability, Unemployment.