La empleabilidad y su mejora como reto de las universidades europeasun estudio comparativo de estudiantes no tradicionales.

Abstract

The employability of university students and graduates has become a key objective of institutions, governments and the private sector, favoured by the Bologna process. However, little research has been carried out on the access to the labour market of non-traditional graduates (those from a minority ethnic group, or at risk of social exclusion, migrants, combining work and studies, being the first generation of university students in a family, being of low socio-economic origin, women with family burdens...) and the specific needs they may experience in their transition from university to employment. The aim of this article is to present the current European reality on this issue, based on a European project with a qualitative, interdisciplinary and biographical approach, involving universities in six countries (United Kingdom, Sweden, Poland, Ireland, Portugal and Spain). In it we summarize the state of the art in the six countries referred to and offer some comparative dimensions between them. These dimensions highlight both the transversality of the challenges of employability and the uniqueness of the six national contexts mentioned, which are characterized by very different historical, economic, university, curricular and cultural features. Finally, we show the advantages of this type of projects to advance in the construction of a European and global comparative education, as one of the important axes for the improvement of policies and practices in formal educational contexts.