Career-oriented university teaching helps graduates enter the labour market
A study by the Research Institute of Personnel Psychology, Organisational Development and Quality of Working Life (IDOCAL) of the University of Valencia (UV) explains how universities can better prepare students for entering the labour market. The findings, published in The Spanish Journal of Psychology, indicate that teaching which explicitly connects academic learning with professional practice improves graduates’ integration into the labour market.
23 de september de 2026
The study, co-led by Ana Hernández (Department of Behavioural Sciences Methodology) and Vicente González-Romá (Department of Social Psychology), both from IDOCAL, defines career-oriented teaching as helping students understand how the subject content is applied in the workplace, developing professional and transferable skills, offering external work placements and providing information about different career options and pathways.
The study tracked 303 university graduates from two months before they completed their studies until six months after graduation. The results show that career-oriented teaching has a positive effect on two key aspects of employability: professional identity – what one wants to become – and social capital – the network of professional contacts that facilitates employment opportunities.
In turn, professional identity and social capital influence relevant indicators of labour-market integration. Thus, greater social capital is associated with a higher probability of finding employment within the six months following graduation and with access to higher-level positions. In addition, a more developed professional identity is associated with obtaining jobs that are more closely aligned with the degree studied and that require a university degree. In other words, the stronger the professional identity, the lower the likelihood of overqualification.
This research was conducted within the framework of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), whose aim is to harmonise higher education in order to facilitate mobility and employability within the European Union. In this context, the study examines one of its central assumptions: that university teaching focused on professional practice promotes better labour-market integration among graduates and access to higher-quality jobs.
The study was carried out in collaboration with Juan P. Gamboa (University of Deusto) and researchers Beatrice I. J. M. van der Heijden (Radboud University, the Netherlands) and Pascale M. Le Blanc (Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands). The research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, the State Research Agency and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) [Ref.: PSI2013-47195-R and PSI2017-86882-R].
Article reference:
Hernández, A., González-Romá, V., Gamboa, J. P., van der Heijden, B. I. J. M., & Le Blanc, P. M. (2026). Is the professional orientation of university instruction related to graduates’ early career outcomes? The mediating role of employability. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 29, e14, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1017/SJP.2026.10032 (Open Access).