Capabilities for media graduate employability: the case of private higher education

Higher education in South Africa faces a challenge of increasing numbers of unemployed graduates. Increased access to higher education and private higher education, together with policy commitments to equal opportunities, have wielded a promise that higher education offers a better future for graduates. And yet, research on graduate destinations shows persistent inequalities in employment outcomes. Graduate employability is a rapidly growing field of research worldwide in the context of a global knowledge economy, drawing a direct link between education, employment and economic growth. South African studies on graduate employment have concentrated primarily on public universities, with a strong focus on the transition of final year students into the workplace. This study focuses on graduates from private higher education institutions who have been in the workplace for between one and five years. Using a human development and capability approach, the thesis confronts the human capital approach to employability. Using a mixed methods sequential exploratory design within a transformative paradigm the project explores the employment experiences of media graduates from three private higher education institutions in South Africa. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 media graduates, four key informants from the institutions, and six media employers, providing multiple perspectives to address the main research question: how does private higher education contribute to enhancing equitable opportunities for media graduate employability and well-being? Subsequently, an electronic survey was conducted with media graduates (n=2,746) to get an expanded understanding of what graduates value, and the factors that enable and/or constrain their participation in the workplace. Graduate employability is shaped by the capabilities developed in higher education, and mobilised in graduates’ functionings in the labour market. Through the use of an enrolment-employment typology matrix, the findings show how the choices and opportunities of higher education intersect with personal biographies and social structures to be unequally realised in employment outcomes for different individuals. Nonetheless, there is variation in students’ agency responses and the capabilities they are able to mobilise, shaped but not overly determined by their backgrounds. Consequently, shifts are needed in private higher education to develop significant capabilities more explicitly for graduates to develop the agility to navigate their way, and shape what they are able to do, be and become in the media industry.