Authors: Stanislav Stedronsky (UiS), Thomas Sattich (UiS), Dian Liu (UiS)
In a nutshell
Next-UP literature review shows three patterns that structure the transgression of young people from education to the labour markets.
The review identified several persistent patterns emerging across the literature:
- fragmentation of cooperation between education and industry
- symbolic adoption of employability agendas
- uneven pace of institutional adaptation between the labour market and the educational system
In addition, educators and employers seem to share the same priorities. Both educators and employers consistently emphasize the need for i) greater integration of practical work experience into education, ii) the development of transversal skills such as communication and teamwork, and iii) earlier and stronger coordination between education and the labor market. However, the perspectives of employers and educators differ significantly in how these priorities are understood and implemented.
Overall, the review suggests that youth transitions are shaped less by individual skill deficits than by systemic coordination challenges, institutional inertia, and uneven governance of employability across education and labour markets.
The literature review – main outcomes
In a nutshell, these are the results of a literature review realized by the team at University of Stavanger as part of WP1 of the Next-Up project.
The systematic search of peer-reviewed literature (2015–2024) in the Web of Science Core Collection resulted in the selection of 37 empirical studies that explicitly examine structural change and education-to-work transitions from the perspective of educators, employers, or both. Structural pressures were identified inductively through full-text analysis, as most studies addressed them implicitly rather than through explicit conceptual frameworks.
The findings indicate that education systems and labour markets are shaped by a set of closely interconnected and mutually reinforcing structural pressures. The final categorization of these pressures was developed on the basis of the most prominent themes and references identified across the selected articles. The analysis highlights pressures related to marketisation and employability governance, digitalisation and automation, economic crises, migration and globalisation, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The latter functioned both as a systemic shock and a catalyst that accelerated pre-existing structural trends.
The review identified several persistent patterns emerging across the literature:
- fragmentation of cooperation between education and industry
- symbolic adoption of employability agendas
- uneven pace of institutional adaptation between the labour market and the educational system
These patterns carry important practical implications for the renewal of educational practices. Both educators and employers consistently emphasize the need for i) greater integration of practical work experience into education, ii) the development of transversal skills such as communication and teamwork, and iii) earlier and stronger coordination between education and the labor market. However, the perspectives of employers and educators differ significantly in how these priorities are understood and implemented. Employers tend to define employability in terms of short-term functional performance and immediate work readiness, whereas educators emphasize long-term learning, critical reflection, and contextual formation of the competencies. This recurring mismatch generates persistent tensions concerning curriculum relevance, work readiness, and responsibility for skill formation. As a result, what constitutes a “work-ready” candidate differs systematically between the two groups. Across contexts, employability has also emerged as a central governance instrument, increasingly used to evaluate institutional performance rather than to support coordinated education–labour market alignment.
A further structural source of misalignment is the different pace of adaptation between education systems and labour markets, a pattern that recurs across several strands of the reviewed literature. Labour market expectations often shift rapidly in response to technological change, economic crises, and competitive pressures. By contrast, educational institutions tend to adapt more slowly due to governance and institutional arrangements, accreditation requirements, staff capacity, and resource constraints. This slower pace of curricular adjustment increases the risk of delayed, partial, or merely symbolic responses to evolving labour market demands. The review also highlights the role of employers as key gatekeepers to labour market access. Employability is frequently filtered through cultural expectations, behavioural norms, institutional familiarity, and perceived cultural fit. As a result, access to work is mediated less by formal qualification alone and more by employer-controlled selection practices shaped by these expectations. Such hiring practices may contribute to the reproduction of existing inequality by differentiating who is recognised as employable and who is excluded. In addition, a strong preference for cultural fit may undermine skills- and competence-based agendas and contribute to the persistence of perceived skill gaps among graduates, as reported by employers.
At the same time, accountability regimes increasingly evaluate universities on the basis of their graduates’ employability outcomes. This, in combination with other pressures, drives a partial shift in responsibility for the employability from shared coordination structures towards educational institutions and individuals. However, this shift remains uneven and incomplete, as access to employment continues to be strongly conditioned by employer gatekeeping, governance arrangements, and institutional capacity.
Overall, the review suggests that youth transitions are shaped less by individual skill deficits than by systemic coordination challenges, institutional inertia, and uneven governance of employability across education and labour markets. Persistent transition difficulties arise not merely from a basic discrepancy between the supply and demand of skills, but from structural misalignments among institutional logics, adaptation rates, accountability frameworks, and employer gatekeeping practices. Addressing these challenges, therefore, requires not only simple modifications in curricula or individual competencies but, more fundamentally, enhanced coordination mechanisms and collective accountability among education systems, labour market actors, and governance frameworks.