Increasing the employability of politics and international relations students: Adapting teaching methods to develop ‘industry-ready social scientists’

This paper reports findings from primary research into how to increase the employability of Politics and International Relations students. The future of political science and international relations as an academic discipline depends, to an extent, on our ability to recruit students. This, in turn, depends, to an extent, on our ability to demonstrate that our graduates have positive prospects for future professional employment. Whilst our graduates have skills that are valued by employers, current data show that politics and international relations graduates have substantially lower levels of employability, professional employment and lower wages than graduates in many other subject areas. One approach to increasing graduate employability is to adapt curriculum content. This paper explores the possibility that adapting our teaching methods – our pedagogy – may be an effective method to increase graduate employment. The paper explores the efficacy of method of teaching, adapted from Engineering education, in developing ‘industry-ready’ Politics and International Relations graduates. This pedagogy is called CDIO, which stands for Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate. In essence, the pedagogy teaches engineering through engineering practice. Students learn engineering science by being engineering practitioners. When they experience a barrier to progress in their practice, they learn the scientific and technical knowledge that they need to move forward, in the context of their practice. The pedagogy has been credited with enhancing employability, in large part because it produces ‘industry-ready engineers’ upon graduation. I saw the potential to replicate this pedagogy in Politics and International Relations teaching. Across 3 cohorts, students on my module achieved a 100% first-time pass rate. But has it increased employability? This paper presents a description of how the module was taught, before turning to assess the impact on employability, presenting a survey of former students and an evaluation of their assessment of the impact of the module on their employment