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Abstract

Delivering world-class student experiences, navigating evidence-based graduate outcomes, and advancing the employability agenda are central to the current landscape of UK universities. While maintaining high educational standards and remaining competitive in international student recruitment have become increasingly challenging after the global pandemic and amid ongoing financial pressures faced by the UK universities, limited academic attention has been given to the employability of one-year international postgraduate taught students (IPGTs) in UK higher education. Recognising IPGTs as a significant cohort that makes substantial economic, sociocultural, and expertise-related contributions to both tertiary education and the host country’s labour market, this doctoral study aims to explore the employability, work readiness, and international experiences of IPGTs in UK business and management schools, with a particular focus on how these concepts interact to shape their transition from university to the workplace.This doctoral research uses a sequential mixed-methods design. The qualitative phase (stage one) involved 30 semi-structured interviews, which identified three subdimensions of IPGTs’ employability (IPSE), three subdomains of international experiences within the university (IEIU), three distinct subdimensions of international experiences outside the university (IEOU), and three areas of establishing work readiness. The quantitative part (stage two) collected a new set of 756 valid responses from 54 UK business and management schools. Using the PLS-SEM approach to estimate the SEM model, which identified seven relationships (both direct and indirect) among the key constructs, including IPSE, IEIU, IEOU, and work readiness.This study offers theoretical and practical insights by introducing validated frameworks and constructs, including the multifaceted IPSE, identified domains of work readiness, the differences between IEIU and IEOU, along with their unique dimensions, and multiple estimated relationships among all the constructs. In doing so, it aims to advance employability research by providing actionable strategies and practical implications for practitioners, employers, higher education institutions, and policymakers to improve the employability and work readiness of IPGTs in diverse and dynamic international experience contexts. Additionally, the study outlines future research directions by exploring various student and graduate cohorts, employing longitudinal methods, incorporating stakeholder perspectives, and applying different frameworks to the constructs and the SEM model across diverse cultural and institutional settings.

Awarding Institution(s)

University of Plymouth

Supervisor

Rong Huang, Wai Mun Lim, Danqing Liu

Keywords

Employability, International Experience, Work Readiness, International Postgraduate Student, UK

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Date

2026

Embargo Period

2026-02-26

Deposit Date

February 2026

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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