SWANSEA BOLOGNA SEMINAR ON ENHANCING GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY
12/14 JULY 2006

The key recommendation of the Seminar is that employability remains an important part of the Bologna Process and requires to be addressed in each of the three cycles.


As part of the Bologna Seminar on Enhancing Graduate Employability hosted in Swansea, the delegates participated in four workshops. There were two workshops held on the theme of Embedding Skills in the Curriculum, including soft/sector skills, one held on Internationalisation, including Mobility and one held on Links with Industry.

The recommendations produced by each of the Workshops clearly identified a number of themes and there were several areas of overlap. Therefore, the recommendations have been distilled to the following three recommendations.

• Embedding skills in the curriculum is a key element of the Bologna reforms and as such needs to be monitored, with an emphasis on sharing good practice across Europe. Recognising the wide diversity of national systems, regional priorities and circumstances together with institutional missions, the widest range of method and approaches is to be encouraged. The importance of effective links with employers cannot be over-stated, but the methods adopted must be appropriate to the context of the course of study, the institutions, the geographical regions and national policies.

• Higher education institutions should assist students to recognise and articulate the employability skills developed within the curriculum and in other activities at all three cycles – linked to the Dublin Descriptors/national qualification frameworks and to future Continuous Professional Development needs. Higher education institutions should also ensure that students receive information and advice on all sectors of the labour market, together with career management skills.

• The Bologna reforms are creating a new range of transition and exit points from higher education. The ensuing complexity of options for further study or employment, combined with the encouragement of student mobility requires the provision of high quality professional staff guidance for students and appropriate staff development for academic and other university staff. In this context, higher education institutions and governments should promote a coherent cross-departmental strategic approach, to allow institutions to integrate the international dimension and particularly student mobility in institutional policy and curriculum planning.