Embedding employability into the curriculum: City University鈥檚 Career Activation Program
City, 嗨碰视频 is a project partner with The Careers Group and the 嗨碰视频 for one of 16 funded projects from the QAA. The scope of the project is the exploration of inclusive curriculum to make employability development intrinsic to good teaching and learning. In this blog, City鈥檚 Director of Careers and Employability, Gemma Kenyon, provides the project context from City鈥檚 point of view.
At City, 嗨碰视频, we have been implementing an ambitious strategy to embed employability in the core curriculum of all undergraduate programmes. Our 鈥楥areer Activation Programme鈥 means that we are among the first universities in the UK to embed Career Focus education and Professional Experience as distinctive, core, credit bearing components of all undergraduate programmes.
We based our approach on the findings of the 2017 Department for Education research 鈥淧lanning for success: Graduates鈥 career planning and its effect on graduate outcomes鈥, which investigated factors which lead to long-term success in the professional labour market. This sector-leading strategy is in alignment with our identity as 鈥楾he university for business, practice and the professions鈥; at City our course portfolio is unashamedly vocational, and employability is inherent in our mission.
Linked to our focus on employability is our social mobility mission; we are proud to be one of the most diverse universities in the UK. 77% of our UK undergraduates (with a known ethnicity) identify as from a Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) background and 42% come from the bottom 40% of areas for deprivation when measured by lowest three IMD (Indices of Multiple Deprivation) deciles (21/22 HESA data).
Given that students from backgrounds underrepresented in the professional labour market constitute the majority of our students, ensuring our embedded employability education is inclusive is absolutely essential if we are to be successful in supporting our students to achieve career success. Through this QAA collaborative project, we will be endeavouring to ensure that our Career Focus education is inclusive by design in the following ways:
- Our modules should proactively foster greater understanding of social justice factors that influence career journeys. This includes overt and covert discrimination related to protected characteristics and the resulting disparities in the labour market (e.g. pay gaps, 鈥榳hite spaces鈥), both in terms of critical discussion of coping strategies for those with protected characteristics and how to be an ally.
- Our modules should not assume any prior understanding about or experience of the professional labour market, e.g. from having work experience, pre-existing professional networks or having had careers guidance at school. By starting at ground zero we 鈥榣evel the playing field鈥 for students from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
- Our modules are student-centred throughout in how we encourage exploration of all career options with equal value and students define what career success looks like for them free of judgement.
- Our modules are student-centred in how to support students to openly explore how factors related to their backgrounds (e.g. family expectations) might be influencing their career decisions free of judgement.
In this era of economic uncertainty, it is essential that potential students are not discouraged from entering Higher and Further Education due to concerns about employability. It is our intention that City鈥檚 Career Activation Programme will provide practical support and information for students and their families so they can find the right course 鈥 and career 鈥 for them.
City, 嗨碰视频 is a project partner with The Careers Group and the 嗨碰视频 for .
This page was last updated on 29 January 2024