Ulpukka Isopahkala-Bouret – författare

This book examines how social inequalities in higher education shape the positional competition in graduate labour markets.Featuring research from Europe, North America, and China, the book provides new insights into graduate careers by examining how graduates from various backgrounds navigate their labour market trajectories in different national contexts. Based on in-depth case studies, it demonstrates how the opportunities for graduates in the labour market do not solely depend on individual skills, experience, and abilities, but on how other graduates act within the labour market and the different forms of capital they possess. This book delineates the social, cultural, and educational conditions through which positional competition becomes meaningful to employers and graduates. It explains why employers value and seek out university graduates when hiring and demonstrates how the value of educational credentials interacts with graduates’ gender, ethnicity, and social class positions. Furthermore, it addresses how regional inequalities influence graduates’ employment opportunities.This book is essential for university students and scholars, policymakers, and anyone interested in the recruitment of graduates. It was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Education and Work.

This book examines how social inequalities in higher education shape the positional competition in graduate labour markets.Featuring research from Europe, North America, and China, the book provides new insights into graduate careers by examining how graduates from various backgrounds navigate their labour market trajectories in different national contexts. Based on in-depth case studies, it demonstrates how the opportunities for graduates in the labour market do not solely depend on individual skills, experience, and abilities, but on how other graduates act within the labour market and the different forms of capital they possess. This book delineates the social, cultural, and educational conditions through which positional competition becomes meaningful to employers and graduates. It explains why employers value and seek out university graduates when hiring and demonstrates how the value of educational credentials interacts with graduates’ gender, ethnicity, and social class positions. Furthermore, it addresses how regional inequalities influence graduates’ employment opportunities.This book is essential for university students and scholars, policymakers, and anyone interested in the recruitment of graduates. It was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Education and Work.

In this open access book, the authors argue that the policies, practices and politics of lifelong learning result in a range of unintended – and often unwanted – consequences. The book demonstrates that while the multiple promises of lifelong learning (LLL) remain unfulfilled, what is clear is that the policy discourses of LLL embody a particular view of the subject (the citizen), who is invariably the object of its attention. The book interrogates the kind of subject LLL seeks to cultivate and shows how this subject is aptly characterised as neurotic. Based on the analytical examination of a great deal of empirical data collected in Finland, which is often regarded as the poster child of educational reform towards a knowledge economy, the book offers novel insights into lifelong learning by analysing its unintended consequences, such as feelings of inadequacy, difficulties in coping, anxieties and unfulfilled promises generated by the political demands for continuous self-development. It addresses the structures and mechanisms as well as the cultural presuppositions that result in those unintended consequences. The book contains critical social and cultural analyses that examine the unintended consequences of lifelong learning from macro, meso and micro perspectives.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Research Council of Finland.

This open access book offers critical, multidisciplinary analyses on graduate employability. The book examines employability at the macro, meso and micro levels: higher education policy, the labour market, higher education institutions, organisations, individuals and social groups, in European, North American and Australian contexts.