IN DEPTH
Enhancing employability in higher education libraries
Anglia Ruskin University Library is making concerted eff orts to support its library and information science students into employment and Libby Homer explains how the policy is helping to develop new skills among existing staff .
FOR a long period, Universities have been benchmarked amongst them- selves using measures such as the DLHE (Destination of Leavers from Higher Education) survey which analyse employment six months post award and more recently the Longi- tudinal Education Outcomes survey which measures earnings at intervals post award.
The importance of employability has increased dramatically with the advent of the TEF and more scrutiny of the “value for money” a degree off ers to students. Whilst gaining a graduate level job at the end of a degree may not be an objective for all stu- dents, successive Governments have seen this as a mark of “success” for students, hence why this measure is a highly pres- sured metric within higher education. Libraries have traditionally contribut- ed to graduate employability by off ering Graduate Trainee roles. However, it could be argued that this has been on a relatively small scale and, within higher education, the number of trainee roles has diminished as a result of HERA grading exercises and cost saving exercises across the sector in recent years. In addition, arguably Grad uate Trainee roles were created to provide opportunities for experience to those who wanted to undertake a post graduate qual- ifi cation in Librarianship or Information Science, growing our profession and “giving
50 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
Libby Homer MA, MCLIP, PFHEA (Libby.homer@anglia.
ac.uk) ) is University Librarian at Anglia Ruskin University
www.aru.ac.uk.
something back”, rather than to satisfy the requirements of a Key Performance Indicator around employability. Within this context, at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), the Univer sity Library have set ourselves the objective of responding to this employability challenge in a variety of diff erent ways which contribute to both the graduate employment opportunities for our graduates and promote the opportunities which joining the wider profession presents.
Anglia Ruskin’s context
ARU is set across four campuses – Chelmsford, Cambridge, Peterborough and London, all of which have a library or learning resources presence. The University has just over 18,000 students from 185 countries and is ranked in
January-February 2020
Libby Homer ARU
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22/01/2020 20:49
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