Graduate capitals and employability: Insights from an Australian university co-curricular scholarship program

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how students participating in a co-curricular scholarship programme in a large Australian university develop their employability. It seeks to add to recent literature regarding different approaches to graduate employability through examining how participating students’ capital acquisition is shaped by and internalised within the structure and culture of the scholarship. The paper also offers an example of how comprehensive and integrated co-curricular scholarship programmes can facilitate graduate employability. It suggests that despite curricular intentions to promote comprehensive and processual approaches to employability, students’ employability internalisations are influenced by possessive and positional messages and cultural cues within the scholarship programme. These insights serve as important considerations for higher education institutions seeking to instigate or improve their employability curricula.

KEYWORDS:

• Graduate capitals
• employability
• higher education
• scholarship programs
• career identity
• co-curricular

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).