Monitoring of the plans of insertion of non-traditional students of the University of Seville during its first year of access to the labor market

Abstract

The economic crisis has contributed to increase the access and the return of students to the university in order to improve their employability. However, unemployment figures for graduates remain high. For this reason, our study aims to analyze the contents and modes of transitions of nontraditional students from the university to the labor market, focusing on the following two dimensions: a) strategies and actions to be inserted in the labor market; B) barriers they perceive to enter the labor market. However, we have worked on other dimensions: work experience, job applications and selection processes, career guidance services and job information and expectations of the future. For this purpose, 8 interviews (3 men and 1 woman, four of them of first generation and three of them have low incomes) have been carried out individual biographies to nontraditional students belonging to different areas of knowledge of the University of Seville: Health (Pharmacy), Arts and Humanities (History) and Social and Legal Sciences (Finance and Accounting and Journalism). The interviews have a longitudinal approach and have been carried out in two phases. The first interview was held during the last year of the degree. The second interview took place a year later. According to the second interview, the results show that only one student of the four interviewees had completed the university degree and was finishing a master's degree. The strategies and actions to favor their insertion in the labor market remain, surprisingly, inconclusive and diffuse. Students have not developed strategies or resources to facilitate their access to the labor market. On the other hand, the participants consider it important to acquire complementary training, mainly in languages and new technologies. As for the obstacles they perceive, all point to the scarcity of employment as a result of the economic crisis. To this factor must be added the limitations derived from their personal circumstances, more significant in the cases of students with disabilities.