Home | About Us | Contact Us | Site Map | FAQs

^aIllinois State University, 333 DeGarmo, Campus Box, 5900, Normal, IL 61790-5900, USA. E-mail: zlin@ilstu.edu

^bLakehead University, 955 Oliver Road, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada P7B 5E1. E-mail: robt.sweet@shaw.ca

^cYork University, 4700 Keele Street, North York, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3. E-mail: anisef@yorku.ca

The analyses suggest that study choices are significantly related to transition success. It appears that the labour market favours vocational over liberal graduates with regard to employment status, income, job security and job satisfaction. Given the strong and consistent differences in labour market outcomes between liberal and vocational graduates, we anticipated similar differences in employability skills across these groups. However, what we found was a surprising lack of difference between liberal and vocational graduates in their employability skills. Employers were nevertheless more likely to utilize employability skills from vocational than liberal graduates. Differences in the opportunity to apply such skills might be due to problems in the flow of trustworthy signals between graduates and employers. Greater trust between employers and graduates with respect to skills utilization likely reflects the more formalized network with respect to vocational fields of study that link employers, students and the university.

Higher Education Policy (2003) 16, 55-85. doi:10.1057/palgrave.hep.8300002

University graduates; field of study; labour market outcomes; employability skills; Canada, school-work transitions; satisfaction; liberal education; vocational education