UK entry-level job postings have continued to fall month by month since ChatGPT launched in 2022, according to reports by recruitment platform Adzuna. The Big Four consulting firms have all cut graduate intakes as GenAI absorbs the drafting and review work that used to anchor a trainee’s first year. Organisations are adopting AI tools faster than their employees can develop the judgement needed to use them well. These, among other developments, pose significant challenges for graduate employment, and they are prompting existential crises for universities.
The traditional agreement, in which universities taught theory and employers finished the job through graduate schemes, has broken down. To universities, building employability usually means offering CV writing and LinkedIn profile advice. Students already juggling academic, professional and personal lives can treat such activities as “optional extras”. Developing technical skills is only half the battle. The greater one is helping graduates frame their own roles when a chatbot can produce a plausible first draft in seconds.
We can address the challenges of today’s job market by working directly with employers to embed skills at every level of the university curriculum. Here’s how.
1. Focus on skills from the very start
Students should understand employers’ expectations and the need for continual skills development from the start of their time at university. By integrating and assessing skills within modules at every level, we can challenge the common perception that this is low priority and extracurricular.
Our new skills module for first-year undergraduates, Future You, aims to inspire proactive change leaders with the mindset and skills required to thrive in any industry and career. Students begin the module with an immersive online hackathon activity, collaborating with colleagues and external participants from universities around the world. In the second phase, we run weekly interactive workshops and set online activities and an integrated assessment task.
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2. Encourage a skills mindset
More important than the development of any single skill is a change in mindset about what it will mean to be an early career professional in the 2030s. Students arrive at university having inherited a perception that a degree leads to a graduate scheme, which leads to a career. That reality is fading away, and pretending otherwise does students a disservice. The key is to reframe the future by making students aware that:
- the future is not something that happens to students, it is something they are actively building
- to reduce anxiety about automation, they must become AI fluent
- instead of waiting to be trained on the job, they must produce work from week one.
If students graduate with an understanding of the above, they are better prepared to succeed, no matter what the future throws at them.
Our Future You module encourages students to align the set tasks with their own interests or professional roles. This makes skill development more relevant and helps transfer learning to real world settings. We operate a “flipped classroom” model, which means we provide pre-workshop reading and activities online for each syllabus topic.
We develop knowledge through group activities during the workshop, and consolidate it with an assessed task that students begin working on before the workshop ends. This gives them the opportunity to ask questions in real time before customising and completing their work to a deadline.
Each topic makes the connections between academic content, classroom collaboration, educator support and time-bound assessment explicit. For example, assessment of the digital skills topic requires students to produce an infographic which summarises the skills required in a real job advert and considers how they can be acquired and evidenced. Students choose a role that interests them and their work draws on the “big picture” of job market developments. This information will have already been covered in the module materials and discussed during a workshop on the role of LinkedIn.
The skills developed are consolidated in the final year with a capstone module built around a central employer-led project. Students work collaboratively on a brief that changes in real time over the course of the module. They are assessed via a reflective portfolio tracking their progress and a final group-based viva.
3. Reframe assessment as part of the learning process
As AI produces increasingly plausible content, our challenge is to develop the human capabilities that AI cannot demonstrate: judgement, leadership, ethical reasoning and critical thinking. If we embed AI into assessment, its critical and responsible application becomes an explicit learning outcome.
Through workshop participation, students can learn that AI’s enduring role is to enable rather than replace human-led services. Success requires iterative and critical engagement to build confidence alongside essential skills. When taught in this way, human-centred AI adds value while keeping people at its heart.
In Future You, students compile a portfolio of work on a Padlet board throughout the module containing visual proof of attendance, activities completed during the workshops and the associated assessed tasks. The required formats vary between podcasts, diary entries, images and infographics. This approach “keeps the human in the loop” and reduces the risk of inappropriate AI use. The Padlet board allows these artefacts to be displayed in a professional format with appropriate commentary and labelling.
Subject knowledge is essential but if we help students understand what the future might hold and work in partnership with GenAI to integrate skill development and real-world challenges throughout programmes, we build both capability and confidence.
Raphael Dennett is senior lecturer in innovation and entrepreneurship and Lisa Harris is director of digital learning, both at the University of Exeter Business School.
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