The Employability and Entrepreneurship in Higher Education

Dear Colleagues,

University education aims to enhance the professional capabilities of citizens, with employability and entrepreneurship being two critical aspects of university curricula; consequently, ensuring an adequate supply of opportunities for human capital development in each social and economic context has become essential. This entails the promotion of robust university curricula aligned with the labour demands of highly competitive knowledge-based economies with the objective of fostering economic growth through more and better-quality jobs as well as greater social cohesion by enhancing competitiveness, innovation, and updating the social model.

The employment of university-educated human capital boosts an economy’s growth potential, as high-level qualifications impact productivity, technological capacity, and adaptability to social contexts. Consequently, educational programmes and university curricula are currently oriented towards the demands of the knowledge society, the expansion of higher education, employability, lifelong learning, competencies, quality, and transparency. Employability and entrepreneurship should encourage universities to implement entrepreneurial initiatives and raise awareness of the professional opportunities available to students and graduates. Their objective should be to facilitate the integration of university graduates into the labour market, equipping them with the necessary tools to search for and obtain posts, and to foster strategies that promote entrepreneurship in the professional contexts in which they are trained, to generate innovation, and to contribute to economic and social value to their environment.

This Special Issue focuses on analysing and making visible research conducted on employability and entrepreneurship in higher education. Various strategies and educational practices related to employability that make significant contributions to the scientific community and the development of more competitive and sustainable societies will be explored. Research on gender and the employability of marginalised groups in higher education (people with disabilities and other minorities or groups defined by race, ethnicity, sexual identity, etc.) will also be included. These contributions will contribute to the promotion of social justice in educational and professional settings.

Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• Innovation and the contribution of university graduate employability to their environment’s economic and social value.
• Academic training in higher education directed towards transitioning to the professional and labour markets.
• The design of high-quality degree programmes for the global labour market and employers.
• Mobility and employability in higher education.
• Lifelong learning for employability and entrepreneurship.
• Sustainable employability and entrepreneurship.
• Doctoral studies and research on employability in universities, research centres, and companies.
• Educational practices at universities and training centres directed towards labour market integration.
• Education and entrepreneurial culture within the university community.
• Gender and employability.
• People disabilities and employability in higher education.
• Employability and vulnerable groups in higher education.

Contributions to this Special Issue should adhere to one of three categories of papers—articles, conceptual papers or reviews—and are expected to address topics that fall within the scope of the Special Issue.

Prof. Dr. Marcos Jesús Iglesias Martínez
Prof. Dr. Inés Lozano-Cabezas
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• educational practices
• employability
• entrepreneurship
• gender and equality
• innovation
• Higher Education
• lifelong learning
• social inclusion
• sustainable development
• mobility
• training