%X Higher education has grown to mass proportions in the past two decades in Portugal, with the
political expectation that it will contribute to the knowledge economy and social change.
However, the predominantly low skilled productive system has led to increasing graduate
unemployment and underemployment. The central question in this research is what higher
education signifies for students and graduates in this context.
Higher education has the potential to change students' relationship with knowledge, developing
critical thinking, autonomy and character (Barnett 1990). However, this potential for change
depends on how individuals engage in it, according to their values and perspectives (Bloomer
2001). Moreover, knowledge is constructed contextually (Lave and Wenger 1991), and its
relevance is not always clear when graduates start work. This longitudinal research therefore
consisted of in-depth interviews with graduates to ascertain the meanings and values they
attribute to higher education and how this changes in the transition to work.
In this study, participants' view of higher education was narrow, focussing on how it affected
their labour market opportunities, rather than as a place for personal development, gaining
generic skills and critical engagement. This affected how they acted on their educational
opportunities and the criteria by which they measured the validity of higher education after their
transition to work. Moreover, labour market limitations meant that graduates who did not find
work in areas directly related to their degree devalued their education. This study concluded
that individual paths from education to work are affected by social networks, resources and
significant others, but there are no deterministic effects of social class, gender or field of study.
A key finding was that in contrast to Bloomer's concept of learning careers (1997), graduates'
embedded knowledge was insufficient for their new work contexts; instead they needed to
reconstruct their knowledge according to their socio-cultural resources, and membership of
multiple communities. This has significance internationally for research into transitions to work.
In general, broader perspectives of higher education by students and employers, greater
support for the transition and greater labour market opportunities, would be beneficial for both
graduates' self-realization and how mass higher education can affect the knowledge economy.
%D 2010
%A Teresa Frances Pole-Baker Gouveia
%I Institute of Education, University of London
%L discovery10006514
%T Students' views of higher education in their transitions to work in Portugal
%O Leaves 292-357 are appendices.