1. Using the internet to explore employability in American and British HEIs: a discourse analysis Deesha Chadha & James Toner King’s College London

2. Background to the work The employability agenda has shifted, but equally become more central to HEIs The discourse has developed, but is it clear, complex, confusing? – How do we know what it is? – What might that understanding lead to?

3. Methodological approach: discourse analysis ‘How do Higher education institutions (HEIs) represent employability through the world wide web?’ – 40 HEIs were selected from a rankings table from both the USA and the UK – The term ‘employability’ was typed into the search engine – First 5 pages that came up were downloaded and printed off for analysis

4. Insights In the UK, conscious effort is made to advertise the achievements of graduates In the UK, a greater emphasis is placed on the engagement between students and the careers service (or equivalent) than is the case in the USA Both in the USA and in the UK, there are indications of employability becoming increasingly synonymous with enterprise and entrepreneurialism In the USA, there are a number of examples of the employability agenda being linked with community engagement

5. Playing with the data… What if the data could be looked at in another way? Disseminated more widely? Discussed? What else could be learnt? What other questions might arise? http://hern.org.uk/exhibit/employ.html