Employability and professional development: What happens after graduation?

Abstract

This paper discusses and analyzes current university formation, identifying its role and the principles that guide it. Taking as analytical reference the public policy guidelines for higher education, author reflections, and research conducted with 1798 graduates from 61 college courses at a University in southern Brazil, this work questions the role of the university today, in the face of its assumed responsibilities: employability and professional formation. The authors specifically direct their analysis toward the congruences and incongruences between university professional formation and the expectations of work in the job market. Still today, the university is assigned the role of active debater in discussions through creative reflection and criticism over its own formation processes, over and above the provision of quality education that allows students to think about society and about their role in the world as a subject of, and in, history.