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Editorial 

Welcome to Volume 9 of the Journal of Teaching and Learning for Graduate Employability.  
 
The results of the 2017 Employer Satisfaction Survey (ESS), which reported the views of over 
4,000 employers about the attributes of recent graduates from Australian higher education 
institutions, indicate that overall 84 per cent of these employers were satisfied with the 
graduates who worked for them. Furthermore 93 per cent of supervisors reported that the 
qualification prepared the graduate ‘very well’ or ‘well’ for their current employment. This 
suggests a good correlation between the skills and knowledge acquired by higher education 
graduates during their studies and the requirements of their jobs after graduation.  
 
Interestingly, in the same report, 25 per cent of the graduates indicated that they thought their 
degree was less important to their employment than their supervisors did. But herein lies the 
issue: we must remember that Degree A does not necessarily lead to Career A. A university 
course – particularly at undergraduate level – is often a grounding in a discipline which, most, 
importantly, enables students to think, learn and communicate in more sophisticated ways. In 
many universities, about half the commencing cohort enter less vocationally defined degree 
courses. Regardless, many change direction during their undergraduate degrees, as they find 
the right ‘next step’ for them. 
 
Reports like these sometimes lead us to the perception that the value of such a degree 
experience is lower. Indeed, sometimes in the mainstream media, we hear about ‘useless 
degrees’. Education is a good thing, no degree is useless in itself, but we can see why some 
think this way if they are under the impression that a degree is a first step on a clearly defined 
career pathway. There are boundless reports reminding us that the world of work is changing 
rapidly, and so educational pathways into finding meaningful work are also likely to be 
changing. 
 
Nevertheless, this is a reminder that there is still work to be done in making more explicit to 
students where these graduate skills and competencies are incorporated into courses, units, 
teaching and learning experiences and assessment tasks – and the various ways in which 
they might assemble the evidence to future employers in various fields as to how they might 
flourish in a particular area of work. 
 
The first two paper’s in this volume tap into related themes. The first reports a study at Leeds 
Metropolitan University in the UK which investigated student perceptions of their skill 
development. Authors of the report ‘Enhancing student awareness of employability skills 
through the use of progress files’, Dawn Leggott and Jane Stapleford, found that fewer than 
half the students believed that they had developed the skills of ‘organisation and planning', 
‘critical thinking and analysis', ‘self-confidence', ‘decision-making' and ‘problem-solving' by the 
final year of their degree. However, after one year of work experience, most of the graduates 
realised, in hindsight, that they had indeed developed these skills upon graduation and that 
they had been able to transfer them from the university to work context. Given the competitive 
nature of the job market it is important for graduates to not only recognise their employability 
skills, but also to understand where they have been embedded and developed throughout 
their studies so that they can evidence them in demonstrating employability.   

The second paper in this volume shares the results of a study which examined perceptions of 

eportfolios, their uses, the skills required to implement them, and confirms their importance as 



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a tool for student reflection on their employability. Portfolios have long been used as a 

repository for evidence of skills and competencies and increasingly eportfolios are emerging 

as a strategy for collating artefacts including demonstrations, resources, and documenting 
learning and assessment. As eportfolios are flexible and enable students to collect evidence 

of learning, reflect on it and make connections between the various components of their 
studies, they are an ideal vehicle for graduates to demonstrate their employability.  

On behalf of the Editorial Committee and Deputy Editor Dr Beatrice Tucker I commend this 

volume to you and invite you to engage with the forthcoming papers throughout the year as 

we seek to promote scholarly communication and debate, and scholarship in learning and 

teaching for graduate employability.  

Alfred Deakin Professor Beverley Oliver, Editor