Conceptualising Graduate Outcomes with Critical Realism

Abstract

Graduate outcomes are becoming increasingly prominent within higher education (HE) policy, driven by national governments keen to demonstrate 'value for money'. The majority of HE policy in this area uses narrow economic metrics, such as employment status and salary, often derived from national surveys of graduates. This paper uses critical realist philosophy to develop a set of foundational concepts (graduate functionings, graduate capabilities and graduate outcomes) that illuminate the key characteristics and mistakes of this HE policy. It is shown that the narrow economic metrics used in policy are graduate functionings not graduate outcomes-they describe how graduates function in the world, rather than how HE influences these functionings. Using graduate functionings to assess the quality and value of HE is an ontological mistake. This judges HE institutions by what graduates do, which may or may not be influenced by HE, rather than considering what HE institutions actually contribute and change. This means that HE policy risks producing inaccurate and misleading conclusions. The paper concludes by recommending how policy could adopt these foundational concepts to better assess the quality and value of HE, offering more appropriate accounts of how HE impacts graduates.

Exploring learning in critical realism

“…Tikly (2015) further notes the importance of comparison when proposing causal mechanisms, and the tentative nature of such conclusions. Fryer (2021) provides an interesting use of retroduction to demonstrate that what are usually understood as graduate outcomes in policy documents, with their econometric and empiricist stance, would in a critical realist account rather be conceptualised as graduate functionings (that is, what graduates do). It is the mechanisms (that is, the causes of what graduates do after graduation) that are the graduate outcomes from higher education.…”

Transnational education, labor market outcomes and graduate employability: a scoping review

“…General graduate outcomes, labor market outcomes and employability are, however, highly contested terms, especially in international comparisons (Bailey and Ingimundardottir, 2015) and recent researchers have argued for using critical realism to better operationalize these complex topics (Fryer, 2022). Most researchers who have studied graduate outcomes have focused on what graduates do ("graduate functionings" such as a job) instead of the causes of what graduates do ("graduate capabilities" such as certain pedagogies) or the influence of higher education on the causes of what graduates do ("graduate outcomes") (Fryer, 2022). In this paper, the focus is on graduate outcomes and employability, which could be characterized as "graduate functionings"; therefore, they are not necessarily indicative of the casual, institutional impact on the graduate.…”

“If somebody had told me I’d feel like I do now, I wouldn’t have believed them…” Older adults’ experiences of the BELL trial: a qualitative study

“…This qualitative study, which was subsumed within a larger pragmatic controlled trial, is underpinned by a philosophy of critical realism (CR) (37) , acknowledging the limitations of positivism and constructivism within social science research (38) . To examine older adults' experience participating in group kettlebell training, data from in-depth, semistructured interviews, were thematically analysed, with codes and themes developed inductively using reflexive thematic analysis (39)(40)(41)(42) .…”