11 topics among 7,591 employability research abstracts (1942–2024) : a structural topic model and call for interdisciplinary perspectives

Abstract

The goal of this research was to empirically evaluate what topics can be discerned in employability scholarship. We sought to illustrate the diverse specialised expert knowledge across the full multidisciplinary breadth of employability literature, not only in the two predominant fields of graduate employability and career development. Recent calls for greater integration between graduate employability and career development scholarships are warranted. But this study demonstrates that employability is studied in a much broader range of disciplines than just those two areas. This research argues that future scholarship should foster the advancement and application of research insights across the full breadth of disciplines, education and training systems and socio-cultural contexts. By doing so, the often-noted fragmentation and fuzziness in the employability literature will begin to be addressed