Evaluating labour market–educational programme fit: A case study on aligning supply and demand for competences using a generic approach:

Laura Felby; Jacob Nielsen; Anna Roesen; Morten Mathiasen; Sune Müller

doi:10.3384/njvet.2242-458X.241441

Authors

Laura Felby Aarhus University, Denmark https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2183-2431
Jacob Nielsen Business Academy Aarhus, Denmark https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1196-8733
Anna Roesen Business Academy Aarhus, Denmark
Morten Mathiasen Business Academy Aarhus, Denmark
Sune Müller University of Oslo, Norway https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3194-0233

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3384/njvet.2242-458X.241441

Keywords:

curriculum development, employability, graduates, Bloom, job ad analytics

Abstract

There is a long-standing debate within academia and practice on how specific educational programmes and educational systems, in general, prepare students for the labour market after graduation. This article contributes to this debate by exploring to what extend Bloom’s revised taxonomy (BRT) can be used to investigate the degree of alignment between the demand of the Danish labour market and the supply of competences. We present a generic method for evaluating labour market–educational programme fit that can be used across educational programmes. This method is developed and tested in a case study in which BRT is used to investigate the alignment between the curriculum and labour market demand for skills, knowledge, and compe-tences. We compare the curriculum of the multimedia design programme with relevant job advertisements. This comparison involves a qualitative analysis of both the programme’s learning goals and the advertisements’ content based on qualitative and abductive coding. We identify areas of misalignment and discuss how the educational programme can use the information to align the supply with the demand for competences.

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