Projects

Role of universities in offering Employability Development Opportunities to accounting and finance students

In recent years, increasing social mobility has become a major objective of government policy. In particular, the degree to which young people from disadvantaged backgrounds can access and perform well in various levels of education is of keen policy interest due to the important role that education play in "levelling the playing field" (Cabinet Office, 2011). In this context, more and more students from low socioeconomic status (SES) attend University. Still they continue to be underrepresented in higher education. Interestingly, academic research has focused primarily on the experiences of undergraduates from various racial and ethnic groups (Denson, Bowman, Ovenden, Culver & Holmes, 2020), as well as those of different genders and sexual orientations (Jacobs, 1996), but has paid very little attention to the SES of students.

Existing literature on the topic is outdated and reaches mixed conclusions. On one side, there is evidence that university students from low SES have lower participation rates and report lower GPAs than their high-SES peers (Walpole, 2003). They might also exhibit lower levels of educational achievement and have lower post-graduation incomes (Walpole, 2003). On the other side, empirical research has emphasised a particularly high level of determination, commitment, and academic skills in their studies from low SES students (McKay & Devlin, 2016).

In order to fill the gap and contribute to the debate, we analyse the relationship between the socioeconomic status of students and a range of outcomes such as academic achievement, graduate occupation and starting salary. We also investigate the role of internships as moderators in the relationship. We concentrate on finance and economics (PPE) degrees for two main reasons. First, the finance industry is oversaturated by upper SES students, and these students are more likely to hold an internship as opposed to lower SES students. Second, with a disproportionately increased push for EDI in the financial industry, there is always demand for more talent at entry-level positions to reach parity, e.g., in areas such as gender.

After assessing the evidence, we hope to provide practical recommendations to universities as well as policy makers on increasing social mobility in higher education.

Work-integrated learning, employability and social mobility

Given the importance of Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) for graduate employability, recent research attempts to better understand how WIL accounts for the factors leading to inclusion and opportunity (Felton and Harrison 2017; Frison 2022; Itano-Boase et al. 2021; Thompson and Brewster 2022). In particular, students from regional/remote areas or low socio-economic backgrounds are known to be under-represented in WIL (Jackson, Dean, and Eady 2023; Jackson and Dean 2023).

There are different types of WIL and one that has emerged recently is the idea of Live Briefs, defined as "a curriculum-based approach to engaging students and assessing their learning by using current, real-world activities devised and presented by professional partners in collaboration with academic staff" (Boz et al., 2021). This form of WIL has the potential to close the social gap at university by allowing equal access to work experience and graduate capital (Middleton et al., 2023).

In this project, we are investigating student perceptions of work-integrated learning (e.g. live brief) and its impact on employability and graduate outcomes, looking at any differences across student characteristics (e.g. socioeconomic background). The aim is to assess the effectiveness of such WIL techniques (relative to other employability opportunities) in closing the social gap in graduate outcomes and access to elite professions.