Abstract:

At the level of European Union, there is a high emphasis on the employability of young people due to high unemployment rate of young people and it is one of the criteria for majority university rakings. Accordingly, at the level of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), strengthening the potential employability of young people was set as one of key development priorities. Closer cooperation between education, businesses, entrepreneurial sector, employment services and other stakeholders became one of the strategic goals in the period to 2020, in order to ensure better graduates’ employability. In that context, not only the quality of study program, but also the support activities and services available to students are of great importance.

This paper presents an initial strategic framework for supporting higher education graduates’ early labour market career, in the field of information and communication technologies (ICT). The initial framework is a part of research project „Development of a model for supporting graduates early careers“. The goal of this research proposal is to explore how different elements of student support system are currently organized at European universities and to develop a strategic framework with the accopaning maturity model for supporting higher education graduates’ early careers.

Paper will be organized in several sections:
1) Research background
Theoretical assumptions underlying this research will be presented around the following issues: strategic planning, quality assurance in higher education, employability, maturity models etc.
2) Research steps
In the research process, the design science paradigm is applied and incorporated into the strategic framework design process. The research is carried out in several steps involving predominantly qualitative research methods, and to a lesser extent quantitative methods, which characterizes it as a mixed method research.
3) Initial strategic framework.

As the main part, this paper will present initial framework for supporting graduates' early career development within higher education institutions (HEI). The framework is based on strategic planning and quality assurance principles, and created through the following research steps: literature review, focus groups with experts (decision-makes in HEI from different HEI's, teachers, representatives of employers, students/alumni) and case study research conducted at several different HEIs in Europe (currently conducting research). Through extended literature review and focus groups with experts, authors defined several key process areas important for supporting and enhancing graduates emloyability: strategy, quality assurance, curriculum, extra-curricular activities, teachers, support services and alumni relationship. Further, the results of case study research and discussion with different stakeholders provide a list of most important practices for the mentioned process areas that will be presented in the form of initial strategic framework.

4) Future steps
As a conclusion, paper will provided more detailed information about future work and further steps to be done in the development of final maturity model as a strategic framework for supporting higher education graduates early careers. This includes description of maturity levels for each of defined practices and the reliability and validity check of proposed model by using techniques such as focus groups and Q sorting.

Keywords:

Graduates' employability, student support, strategic framework, maturity model.