Skills and Knowledge

This chapter examines the notion of graduate skills. The graduate labour market is often understood as that part of the labour market characterized by high skills and high knowledge intensity and that is perceived to be needed and used in an increasingly complex economy. Higher education is understood as the developer of these advanced skills. The chapter shows that in all four occupations a mixture of soft and hard skills is required to perform the roles. Most skills in graduate work are not associated with higher education and within the job setting, there is limited space to use the hard skills graduates have developed during higher education.