Gerbrand Tholen

TL;DR: This paper examined how Dutch and British final-year students approach the labour market right before they graduate and found that the interplay between agency and structure is mediated by an intersubjective framework shared by other students.

TL;DR: The authors investigated how networks and connections aid educational elites to gain entrance into the upper echelons of the graduate labour market in two countries: France and England, using interview data from final year students from two elite higher education institutions, Science Po and the University of Oxford.

TL;DR: The authors examined student accounts of credentials, talent and academic success, against a backdrop of the enduring liberal ideal of an education-based meritocracy, and concluded that academic qualifications do not adequately account for comparative differences in the social structure of competition and ideological shifts in class (re)production in different national contexts.

TL;DR: This paper explored and compared how graduate employability is socially constructed within Great Britain and the Netherlands and provided an analysis of both Dutch and British systems of higher education and explained how they shape the positional competition for graduate jobs.

TL;DR: The authors argue that current understanding of the impact of graduates' skills is limited by methodological and conceptual narrowness in current research and that a broader research agenda is required to cover not only the supply but also the demand, development and deployment of graduates’ skills and distinguish between "graduate skills acquired in higher education and the skills of graduates formed prior to, in and parallel to higher education".