Determinants of higher education graduates’ employability: a scoping review

Abstract

Purpose

Graduates’ employability has been recognised as a complex and multidimensional phenomenon in the theoretical literature. However, some critics have emerged around the lack of relation between structural, contextual and individual dimensions that have been acknowledged as relevant for the understanding of graduates’ employability. This study aims to map empirical research, grounded on a scoping and integrative review of the research published to date on the determinants of graduates’ employability and offer a wider perspective of the knowledge produced across different disciplinary fields, and theoretical and methodological approaches.

Design/methodology/approach

Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses protocol for Scoping Reviews, a systematic and extensive search of the literature was carried out and 74 studies focusing on the determinants of graduates’ employability were selected through inclusion and exclusion criteria. Then, data were extracted, analysed and interpreted with quantitative and qualitative techniques.

Findings

The results evidence that multiple factors mainly related to higher education attributes, educational arrangement, personal and interpersonal attributes, and socioeconomic conditions predict the odds of obtaining a job after graduation. This review also demonstrates some fragmentation of knowledge produced in this field and identifies a lack of an integrative approach, calling for more multidisciplinary research that might favour a more comprehensive knowledge of graduates’ employability.

Originality/value

By considering the different factors together, from individual and contextual levels, the present review offers an original and clearer overall picture of what is currently known and what is still unresearched about the determinants of graduates’ employability.

Citation

Monteiro, S., Santos, S., Teixeira, J.N., Torres, L. and Palhares, J. (2025), "Determinants of higher education graduates’ employability: a scoping review", Education + Training, Vol. 67 No. 1, pp. 56-74. https://doi.org/10.1108/ET-04-2024-0190