Martin Edmondson
CEO Graduate Futures Institute
The Graduate Futures Institute (formerly AGCAS) is the community for everyone contributing to careers and employability in higher education. Through our 150+ member universities, we’re shaping graduate futures, together.
Founded nearly 60 years ago, we recently rebranded to reflect the realities of today’s higher education landscape. Careers services remain central to our mission, but our members made it clear that supporting students’ employability now requires a whole‑university approach.
Much employability support still sits outside the curriculum: workshops, appointments, employer events, mentoring and more. This work is vital and will continue. But on its own, it cannot reach every student at the right time. Engagement often comes late, sporadically, or not at all, influenced by time pressures, confidence, belonging and awareness.
Embedding employability into teaching and assessment
When done well, embedding employability into teaching and assessment enables students to practice and articulate the skills they’ll need beyond university while they’re still learning and supported. Sometimes this is as simple as designing assessments that produce outputs students can use later, or framing feedback in ways that help them recognise their progress in real‑world terms.
Curriculum‑based approaches don’t replace the expertise of careers professionals; they amplify it. They allow employability to scale across programmes, while careers teams continue to provide specialist guidance and targeted interventions. The strongest outcomes emerge when academic and professional services work in partnership and can demonstrate the impact of that collaboration.
When done well, embedding employability into teaching and assessment enables students to practice and articulate the skills they’ll need beyond university while they’re still learning and supported.
Industry collaborations
Across our membership, this joined‑up practice is already taking shape. At the University of East London, the Dragons’ Den in Biosciences initiative enables final‑year students to pitch innovative healthcare solutions to academic, enterprise and industry experts. At the University of Sheffield, a long‑running partnership with the Sheffield Children’s Leukaemia Genomics Service has supported postgraduate students into careers within the NHS genomics sector. Both programmes were recognised in our annual Academic Employability Awards.
It’s heartening that, despite significant changes in the sector and a challenging economy, our community of members is growing and remains deeply committed to ensuring that students and graduates have access to meaningful, future-focused career opportunities.
Find out more at www.graduatefutures.org.
