Aligning higher education with the world of work

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine UK higher level skills gaps. UK universities now have many students who were already learning at a higher level about, for, or through, their activities at work, and have decided to formalise this via a higher education (HE) programme; for these students learning mostly takes place away from the university and is sometimes categorised as “work‐based”. Due to the increasingly flexible and hybrid profile of all contemporary students it is more realistic to align those undertaking work‐based study with those choosing more traditional study routes, as all students need to enhance their workplace and life skills in order to better fit them for employment and life after university. There are blurred, not solid, boundaries between the differing kinds of students and between working and studying, and it is useful and productive to acknowledge this continuum.Design/methodology/approach – A researched overview of relevant policy, data and literature including a rese...

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