Destination-Garrett

							ENHANCING STUDENT EMPLOYABILITY: Higher Education and Workforce Development
Ninth Quality in Higher Education International Seminar in collaboration with ESECT and The Independent. Birmingham 27th-28th January 2005

Destination Garret? Employability and the Arts
Mimi Thebo Bath Spa University College, UK Theme 1: Embedding and integrating employability enhancement Abstract This is a discussion based on our experiences in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University College in attempting to integrate and embed employability factors in our curriculum. The Arts face a great challenge in improving student employability as post-graduate employment is notoriously elusive. My own subject of Creative Writing is a rapid growth area in higher education, and is, in many ways, still forming the subject boundaries. There are interesting debates between academic faculty, practicing writers on faculty and college management as what our subject can deliver to our students, and the discussion of employability has a significant impact on this question. In this paper I will use statistical information from the government and our careers office, the English Subject Centre and our own recent survey of students to discuss student and staff expectations and attitudes and the various options we have to address how student learning relates to graduate employment. — I’m coming to you from Bath Spa University College, where I lecture in Creative Writing in the School of English and Creative Studies. This paper is, in part, a case study, in part a solicitation of advice and in part, I suspect, a form of investigation, so that my superiors and I can think about what we are doing and why. But first a bit of background about myself, my institution and my subject: As I write this paper, the men from the Ministry are on campus, trying to decide if Bath Spa University College is to become Bath Spa University. Bath Spa started life as a teacher training college, and gradually added departments based on the needs of secondary teachers. English was one of the first. The 2004 Education Guardiani ranked our English provision at number 28 (just above Edinburgh and Manchester) and the School of English and Creative Studies enjoys a very good national reputation, largely for its extremely successful MA in Creative Writing. The subject has a new MA in Writing For Young People as well as a single honours degree in Creative Studies, and a joint honours degree in English and Creative Studies as well as many combined degree students. We also have PhD students in English with Creative Writing. I’m one of them. I hope to declare my dissertation in a few weeks from the time of this conference. Five years ago, I did the MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa and was awarded a distinction. I published my first novel more or less straight

after the course and began to teach on an hourly paid basis almost directly after that. I have a BA in English, and worked in marketing, editing, and as a freelance journalist, but I have only been a permanent member of the faculty for one academic year. During this time I have discovered in myself a passion for subject development that has been, perhaps foolishly, indulged by both my Subject Leaders and my Head of School. Creative Writing is an interesting place to be right now. Starting life as a rather despised younger sibling of English, it now enjoys somewhat higher status. Part of this is due to subject development, but much of it is because practicing writers bring long lovely lists with them to the RAE table. Creative Writing is also very popular with students and the undergraduate courses are a rapid growth area of HE. UCAS estimated the percentile growth for this year at 49.6% ii with 1,710 entries. At first glance, the subject seems to offer very few problems for achieving excellent graduate employability. Assessment criteria are largely driven by issues of ‘publishability’iii, and students have extensive exposure to practising writers, as many permanent faculty members in the subject are employed on a fractional basis and continue to work as writers as well as in the academy. Creative Writing courses are typically much visited by agents and commissioning editors on a guest lecturer basis, so students generally have opportunities to interact with people working in publishing and broadcasting and to develop vital networking skills. The transferable skills list is also enviable. Graduates in Creative Writing are able to work to deadlines, both on their own and in collaborative groups. Because so much of our teaching is done in a workshop setting where students evaluate each other’s work, they are also comfortable representing themselves in group situations and can give and take criticism constructively in that group situation. They are able to write a wide variety of styles and genres and can tailor their writing for specific readerships. They have habits of evaluating their own work in written reports, are able to read text very closely and interrogatively and are also largely self-motivating with high awareness of their own processes. Obviously they can also plan their own work and respond creatively to challenges There are many career paths for which such a skill base could be useful. Writing itself is one, as is Publishing, but other career routes include Journalism, Advertising, Marketing, Public Relations, the heritage and cultural industries, education, and business, especially corporate communications. However, as the Times reported on 12 September 2004, more than 50% of institution graduates felt they were not in graduate-level jobs. Bath Spa’s internal figures indicate if our teacher trainees were included, the real figure is closer to one in four iv graduates feeling that they were not in graduate-level jobs. Without the teacher trainees, the largest part of Bath Spa’s graduating class are in the arts and humanities, with a great percentage having read Art and Design, Music, Drama, Dance or Creative Writing. These graduates cause our Careers staff several headaches. Firstly, they are slow to find employment in their fields, if indeed they are able to find such employment at all, and so do not register on the Hesa figures. Secondly, beginning employment in these areas tends to be peripatetic and we soon lose track of arts graduates, causing major hassles in data capture. In a 2002 survey undertaken by The Higher Education Regional Development Association – South Westv, some 52% of our graduates expected to be in temporary employment,

32% of which would be employed as retail assistants, cashiers, and catering and bar workers. The image of the starving artist, slaving by day for a crust of bread and then working feverishly all night in their garret, desperately creating…this is a Romantic cliché, surely? But it also appears to be the lot of our graduates, despite their admirable skills and intimate acquaintance with the industry in which they are most likely to find work. Is this normal and acceptable? And if not, what is going wrong? I felt the key to try and answer the latter to be in that HERDA-SW survey. Graduates ‘expected’ to be in temporary, low paid employment. I wanted to try and discover what our third year students ‘expected’ of their working lives, and so constructed a survey of my own. I had fifty-three third year respondents from Creative Studies. I first asked if they had any clear career goal.

Career Goal
17 12 10 8 6 3

Te ac hi ng

ea rg oa l

TV

ng

ng

/C op y

‘Teaching’ included primary, secondary and ESL. Many people who answered in the ‘Journalism/Copy Writing’, ‘Teaching’ and ‘Publishing’ categories also indicated that they intended to continue writing as well, and I had one student state s/he planned to combine baking with writing! It’s interesting to note that ‘No clear goal’ comes second only to ‘Teaching’. I then gave the students a series of statements to tick about how Bath Spa has provided for their employment needs.

Jo ur na lis m

No

Pu bl ish i

cl

W r it in g

W rit i

I have been taught skills valued in the marketplace

I have been helped to meet appropriate employers

Yes No

Yes No

I have been provided with useful career advice

I have been helped to get experience through placements

Yes No

Yes No

Although it was encouraging to see nearly half of the students surveyed felt that we have been teaching them useful skills, it was somewhat worrying that not one student felt the college has helped them to meet appropriate employers and very few felt we had managed to impart useful career advice. Also worrying was how few students felt they had been helped towards placements. The next section was another set of statements to tick – this time designed to discover how confident they felt about their employment prospects.
I'll be the best paid of all my friends I'll be the worst paid of all my friends

Yes No

Yes No

I'll be reasonably well paid, compared to my friends

I'll enjoy what I do for a living

Yes
Yes No

No

I'll find it hard to get the kind of work I want

What I like to do will never make me money

Yes No

Yes No

Again, it was heartening to see how many of our students felt that their working lives will be enjoyable. The rest of the responses, however, show ambivalence about how they felt about their futures. Many students ticked both ‘I’ll be reasonably well paid’ and ‘I’ll find it hard to get the kind of work I want’, and several ticked both of these and also added ‘What I like to do will never make me money,’ as well as ‘I’ll enjoy what I do for a living.’ I felt this shows a lack of coherent thought, which is perhaps why the ‘best’ ‘worst’ and ‘reasonably well’ paid statements received so few responses, as they required students to think about rates of pay for occupations – a more concrete measurement than ‘I’ll enjoy what I do for a living’. I then asked the students what advantage they had taken of current career provision from the School and College.

Steps Taken Towards Employment
40 35 30 Talking to Personal Tutor 25 20 15 10 5 0 Talking to Employers in Bath and Bristol/Home Area Attending Tuesday Night Lectures

Visiting Careers Office

A good percentage had at least visited the careers office, though some wrote notes to say they had only done this once. Attendance at our Tuesday night guest lectures from the Publishing and Broadcasting industries was low, and many people said they did not know or had seldom spoken to their personal tutor.

The second part of this series of statements asked students to tick why they had not pursued opportunities, if they had not. Out of the fifty-three students completing the survey, forty-eight responded to this section.
It didn't seem important I feel hopeless 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 I only want to write I know what I'm going to do I don't know where to start I feel awkward talking about it No one at Bath Spa can help me There's nothing for me where I want to live

I haven't taken steps because

No student felt that no one at the college could help them, which is reason for optimism. However, it was worrying that so many felt they didn’t know where to start or felt awkward talking about employment. It was particularly worrying to see that over ten percent of our third year students felt ‘hopeless’ when confronted with thoughts about their employment. Professional and Academic Development (PAD) provision at Bath Spa University College has been centralised, with all Schools sending their students to do one module within PAD as a separate subject. During the module, they are taught such skills as how to write a CV and give a presentation and are asked to find and complete a work placement. Creative Studies students have been quite vociferous in stating that this module does little for them in terms of helping them towards their career goals, and student module evaluation forms have reflected this. Though we have been working with PAD to improve how they serve our students’ needs, this compulsory second year module is still much resented. My final question asked the students to rank their PAD module from 1 to 10, with 1 being ‘useless’ and 10 being ‘helpful’. The average ranking was 3.

If 'One' is useless and 'Ten' is helpful, how would you rank your PAD module on a scale of one to ten?
14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 zero one two three four Ranking five six seven eight

Number of students

There were few surprises in this data. Any of the teaching staff working with third year students could not help but be aware that many of our students feel ‘hopeless’ and ‘have no clear career goal’. I have heard fears and resentments about issues of employment clearly expressed in third year workshops, and my experience is not an isolated one. But before I discuss new initiatives in our School, I would like to briefly consider the difference between employment and employability and how both are measured. In our sister subject of English, ‘graduates tend to spend time in lower levels of employment immediately after graduation’, yet ‘there is no evidence of long-term unemployment.’vi It may well be that Creative Writing is the same. Or, as one of my colleagues put it, ‘It might not help them get a job so much but it will sure as hell help them do it.’ We need some way of finding if this is true, if our graduates do find their degree helpful once they are in long-term employment. So one of our first and most pressing initiatives is setting up an alumni system, with events to keep them attached to the School and publications where graduates can report back about their achievements and read news about each other. This is an initiative which will aid us to capture at least some anecdotal evidence about how our graduates fare in the working world, and may in time allow us to survey our graduates towards more accurate data capture. Graduates could also be approached to provide work placements for current students, helping our students ‘meet appropriate employers’. We are also extending the curriculum for second year students to include two new modules, Towards Publication and Into Print. These will run on from the successful introduction this year of a first year module called Writing: The Process, and are geared specifically to help our students begin to approach the larger world of writing. Towards Publication is a largely theoretical module which concentrates on entry points for new writers into the world of work, especially on feature writing for small consumer publications. Into Print will run in the second semester and will be a practical module supporting students through their first efforts to become published writers. There was some teaching staff resistance to these modules when they were first proposed. In fact, the dual nature of the two modules, with the theoretical one first as a prerequisite for the practical one, is only partially due to pressures of time and student work levels. Another reason is that some teaching staff felt uneasy about our students approaching magazine and newspaper editors. Some teaching staff and college administrators feared that undergraduate students approaching magazine and newspaper editors might weaken the status of the MA. The two-module system is also designed to discourage students from inappropriate submissions. This points up an interesting difference between the attitudes of the faculty members who are largely academics and faculty members who are largely working writers (though of course we have many staff who are both to some percentage). The working writers tend to feel that editors are well placed (and in our experience are in fact quite eager) to discourage students from inappropriate submissions. We feel that our place is to encourage students to attempt submissions, all the while helping them to do so appropriately, with the necessary consideration of the needs of the publication as it relates to their own skill as a writer. Largely, the more academic members of faculty show a mistaken, though touching belief that the editorial staff of this nation will be troubled by having to refuse our students commissions.

The worrying underlying notion behind this belief is that our students are actually worse than any other beginning writer, when I believe, given my experience as a managing editor, they are very much better. Which is only what we should expect, after teaching them ‘skills valued in the marketplace’. The trouble seems to be that we are unsure we have taught them valuable skills, or at least skills ‘valued in the marketplace’. Staff are united in feeling that writing well is in itself a valuable skill. It is the ‘marketplace’ which some find troublesome. If the faculty are diffident about the economic worth of the knowledge they are imparting, then the students will not have confidence about how their abilities will help them towards congenial employment. I have great hopes that the successes enjoyed by students in these modules will not only inspire the students but the faculty as well. In line with PDP, the college has also introduced more formal procedures for personal tutoring, with an eye to strengthening the bond between student and personal tutor. This has met with varying success in the first year, but has been largely welcomed by subject faculty as a way to help students get the most out of their experience with us. Issues of employment will be discussed with the students, and this will hopefully show in subsequent surveys as diminishing answers of ‘I feel awkward talking about it’ and ‘I don’t know where to start’. Staff members who do feel comfortable talking to students about their economic future report high levels of positive response and student motivation in tutorials. We are also questioning the central provision of Professional and Academic Development, and looking to bring it ‘in house’. The two modules mentioned will go some way towards this, but we are also working with our sister subject of English and related subjects of History and Cultural Studies, both of whom are also considering providing PAD activity in School, so that students who are interested in Publishing or the heritage industries, for example, are able to choose modules appropriate to their career goals. The School of English and Creative Studies hopes to set up a small university press, as well, specialising in literary fiction in the first instance. This would provide great opportunities for work experience within the college, in Publishing, Marketing, etc. Our third year project module is also being reconsidered. Currently, it is rather expected that this should be the start of a novel or a screenplay, or work towards a collection of poetry. We are now encouraging students to think of other projects – self-publishing, performance, or feature writing, for example - as well as more literary writing forms. It seems a lot of change to ask of ourselves in a short amount of time, especially with so many of my colleagues still attached to subject-specific provision. And yet it all seems rather urgent, as well, as another cohort of third years move into their last semester with us. Our Head of School, Tim Middleton, and the Subject Leader, Steve May, are very committed to managing these changes and we hope to be able to employ someone soon to help ease the admin burden, but the management of information, and efforts towards more data capture is a very large task to sit on any faculty shoulders, especially as some of those shoulders might be unwilling to take up the burden. And yet we have hopes that these initiatives will help students feel less that the world of work is something to be endured and more that there is something waiting for them at the end of their degree. Subsequent semesters will show us whether this is in fact the result, and if we have taken on too much.

Of one thing we can be certain: Our students will let us know…clearly and concisely, with telling detail and lively, vivid language.

i

University Rankings, EducationGuardian (education.guardian.co.uk/universityguide2004) UCAS Press Release 15 July 2004 (www.ucas.ac.uk/new/press/news150704) iii p 6-7, ‘Creative Writing: Structures and Trends’, an English Subject Centre Working Paper by Dr Siobhan Holland, published by the English Subject Centre, 2002 iv ‘Don’t Be Too Optimistic About Your First Pay Packet’, 12 September 2004 (www.timesonlineco.uk/1-84850-1246746), based on Hesa data v p 7,Research Briefing: Bath Spa University College, The Higher Education Regional Development Association – South West, 2003 vi The English Degree and Graduate Careers, Brennan, Williams and Blasko, English Subject Centre Report Series, Number 2, January 2003
ii