Work experience is important. It is not the same thing as employability, says IOWL

BELFAST, 10 September 2026 The Institute of One World Leadership (IOWL) has welcomed the expansion of meaningful work-based learning proposed in Universities UK's Future Jobs Roadmap while cautioning against treating work experience and employability as the same thing.

The Roadmap, published by Universities UK with support from Pearson and the British Chambers of Commerce, includes an ambition for all undergraduates to have access to meaningful work-based learning by 2035, with a milestone of 50 per cent by 2030. It also proposes lifelong careers support and closer university-employer collaboration.

Experience matters, but it answers only part of the question

IOWL distinguishes three complementary dimensions. A degree can provide substantial evidence of Capability, including knowledge and understanding. Work-based learning can strengthen and evidence Competency by giving people opportunities to apply what they know. Calibre concerns the judgement, integrity, responsibility and values-led agency governing how both are exercised.

Experience can therefore be highly valuable without automatically demonstrating Calibre. A placement can show that a learner has encountered the workplace and practised particular tasks. It does not, simply by occurring, establish how that person will respond when supervision recedes, interests conflict, rules are incomplete or decisions carry significant consequences.

“Work experience can create access, context, practice and evidence of application. It cannot, simply by occurring, certify judgement, integrity or responsibility.”

IOWL Publication 20260910001, Work Experience Is Not Employability

The equity case remains important

IOWL regards wider access to meaningful work-based learning as significant because access to experience, networks and workplace context is unevenly distributed. A structured university-employer approach can reduce the extent to which opportunity depends on family connections, geography or the ability to undertake unpaid experience.

The Institute's argument is therefore additive rather than oppositional. More students should have meaningful opportunities to apply their learning. At the same time, universities and employers need ways to develop and evidence the qualities that govern how growing capability is used.

Employability should continue beyond graduation

IOWL also questions models that concentrate employability development primarily at the transition from university to a first job. Technology, authority, context and responsibility continue to change after appointment. The judgement required of an early-career employee is not identical to that required when the same person later manages people, budgets, systems or high-consequence decisions.

That is the rationale behind IOWL's Perpetual Calibre Development™ proposition: development of judgement and values-led agency should continue alongside the continuing development of Capability and Competency.

IOWL has published a fuller analysis, Work Experience Is Not Employability: Why Capability, Competency and Calibre Must Travel Together from University into Work, as Publication 20260910001.