Using graduate capital to understand Chinese doctoral dtudents’ self-perceived employability

Abstract

This thesis adopts a mixed method approach to explore Chinese doctoral students’ selfperceived employability which associates with their understanding about the rule of graduate labour market. Utilising Tomlinson’s graduate capital approach (i.e. human, social, cultural, identity and psychological capital), this study assessed Chinese doctoral students’ (N=234) perceptions of self-perceived employability and the key dimensions of the forms of capital via validated psychometric instruments. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with students (N=31) to explore the social construction meaning of employability that these students gave to their perceptions and actions. This study sheds light on the social, educational and labour market contexts from which Chinese doctoral students’ perceptions of their own employability and the scope of the wider external labour market emerged. This study highlights the positional competition is the most common feature when Chinese doctoral students approach to their desired and target occupations in the labour market. They have to obtain the relative positioning in the job competition, which is still with its own set of social and labour market rules. Four main player tactics were identified in relation to how these Chinese doctoral students obtain the positional advantages: attending prestigious higher education institutions (HEIs) to access its opportunity structure and resources; achieving the relative academic performance over other PhDs; gaining the knowledge, skills and performance that employers in the highlyskilled occupational fields want; always improve one’s employability that aligns to the desired or target occupation. In addition, the findings reveal that there are positive relationships between forms of capital and self-perceived employability. It suggests that Chinese doctoral students possessed the forms of capital, which could be able to confer the advantages onto employability management and career-readiness. A thorough understanding of Chinese doctoral students’ self-perceived employability may bring the practical implications for relevant stakeholders when they embed graduate capital into PhD students’ employability strategy.

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ORCID for Michael Tomlinson: orcid.org/0000-0002-1057-5188

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