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This study employs advanced data-driven and machine learning techniques to critically assess the integration of Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) into academic programs, with a focus on psychological well-being, financial, and equity and inclusion risks. Using data from the 2018 National Graduates Survey in Canada, the analysis examines how WIL programs influence students’ academic and career trajectories, with particular emphasis on identifying key risk factors. The study explores psychological well-being risks associated with academic programs, financial burdens both during and after education, and equity and inclusion risks for institutions. By analysing variables related to work placements, student loans, financial assistance, and the alignment of WIL experiences with students’ post-graduation employment, this research provides critical insights into the effectiveness of WIL programs from a large-scale, survey-based, big data perspective. The findings highlight key areas for improvement to mitigate these risks and enhance the overall value of WIL for students across various disciplines.

Abstract Widening participation and inclusion are receiving increasing attention in higher education, including through employability strategies aimed at ensuring that students from all backgrounds have the opportunity to succeed. However, both international and Australian evidence suggests that despite ongoing efforts by policymakers and higher education providers to embrace diversity and inclusion, students from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds continue to face unequal graduate employment outcomes and disadvantage post-graduation. While work integrated learning (WIL) is widely recognized as a powerful strategy to enhance employability, low SES students continue to face significant hurdles in accessing and participating in WIL placements. This paper reveals rich insights into the challenges and opportunities these students face in sourcing and transitioning into WIL placements. Drawing on a contemporary capital model of employability, this qualitative multiple-case study explores the placement experiences of four low SES students at a large urban Australian university, purposefully selected from a separate survey of over 200 students. Findings reveal that cultural capital significantly shapes low SES students’ WIL placement and workplace transition experiences. Specifically, low SES students face heightened self-doubt and feelings of cultural mismatch within professional environments, often needing to adjust behavior to align with dominant unspoken workplace norms. This paper offers recommendations for policymakers, higher education institutions, and industry partners to bridge these gaps, ensuring no student is left behind in their workplace transition.

Work-integrated learning (WIL) placement is increasingly being prioritized in university course curricula as industry, students and government seek improved employability skills, work-ready graduates and stronger graduate employability outcomes. For disciplines such as business, without industry accreditation mandating WIL placement experiences WIL placement are typically non-compulsory and administered through competitive or self-selection approaches which favor higher grade point average (GPA) and socioeconomic status (SES) students at the expense of less advantaged students. Despite well-documented benefits to multiple stakeholders, business schools’ reluctance to embrace compulsory WIL placement is underpinned by internal challenges of cost, supply, and implementation. The dynamics of business schools’ future sustainability is under threat by market disruptions, pandemic induced income and enrolment losses, and performance driven funding. Potentially the introduction of compulsory WIL placement could decrease existing discriminatory WIL placement practices and enhance student equity while delivering a powerful value proposition to combat future sustainability challenges.

Report rationale From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 68 years ago, to the Millennium Declaration 15 years ago, and to the Sustainable Development Goals today, global attention remains focused on promoting human rights and eliminating discrimination and inequitable outcomes for women, men, girls and boys. However, despite widespread recognition of women’s rights and the benefits that accrue to all of society from equitable treatment and access to resources and opportunities for women and men, inequalities persist. At the regional and national levels, there is growing recognition that as African women attain higher measures of economic and social well-being, benefits accrue to all of society; despite this growing understanding, removing inequalities for women has not kept pace. Significant gaps between men’s and women’s opportunities remain a major challenge and a severe impediment to structural economic and social transformation that is still the goal of all African countries. The evolving development landscape – with its emerging opportunities, vulnerabilities and shocks – makes it imperative for Africa to accelerate the advancement of sustainable and equitable human development. This can be achieved by building economic, social and environmental resilience for women and men, enhancing their productivity, and accelerating the pace of structural economic transformation in the region. This report explores where and how progress in gender equality has been made and how best to accelerate the pace of gender advancement in Africa. Its focus on gender equality comes at a time of tremendous change across the continent, including recent dynamics of social and economic transformation that have resulted in significant strides in Africa’s human development. Overview This report pinpoints the intersection between political and economic processes, and presents a clear agenda for action. The agenda provides an approach to help African countries more forcefully confront the challenge and accelerate progress on gender equality and women’s empowerment. The agenda on gender equality can support progress toward Africa’s Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While SDG 5 focuses specifically on gender equality, addressing gender issues more vigorously and comprehensively will expedite efforts by governments and other stakeholders to achieve many, if not all, of the other SDGs due to the role and position that women play across all of society and all sectors. Analytical approach From UNDP’s perspective, gender inequality from the standpoint of human development is addressed by improving women’s capabilities and opportunities, and contributing to better outcomes for present and future generations. The nexus between gender equality and human development is based on three overlapping concerns: • economic: more productive work at home and in the marketplace as employers, employees and entrepreneurs; • social and environmental: better health, education, cessation of physical and sexual violence against women, and sustainable resource use for present and future generations; and • political: more equal voice and representation in decision-making and resource allocation. The analytical approach taken in the report is to examine the challenge of gender equality by pinpointing the interaction between political, economic and social processes that either impede or contribute to advancing women’s empowerment. A ‘political economy’ perspective is used to understand the way ideas, resources and power are conceptualized, negotiated and implemented by different social groups in relation to gender inequality – whether in the workplace, the marketplace, or at home. It is important to emphasize that the preparation of this Africa Human Development Report was a highly collaborative effort between the UNDP Regional Bureau for Africa and many different agencies, institutions, practitioners and researchers. It was also prepared in close collaboration with the African Union Commission. As a result, it not only focuses on sub-Saharan Africa, but also includes the Arab states of North Africa. The report preparation process included in-depth quantitative research and analysis, a qualitative interactive study, consultations with numerous organizations throughout Africa as well as an Africa-wide online survey. The sections below highlight some of the key points found in the chapters of the report. Progress and challenges in African human development The report reviews current progress in African human development using the different indicators that UNDP has constructed to capture various aspects of human development, including gender inequality. Using UNDP’s different human development indicators, there is wide variation in values and ranking across the African region and between the different African sub-regions. Overall, Africa has one of the fastest rates of improvement in human development over the past two decades but also has the lowest average levels of human development compared to other regions in the world. At the same time, not all African countries have low human development. Seventeen African countries across the five sub-regions have attained medium and high human development – five countries each from Southern and North Africa, four in Central Africa, two in West Africa, and one in East Africa. The highest human development levels in Africa are in Algeria, Libya, Mauritius, Seychelles, and Tunisia. Thirty-six African countries (out of 44 countries worldwide) are classified in the low human development group. Countries with initially low levels of human development are making large gains. The following countries have made the largest gains since 2000: United Republic of Tanzania, Burundi, Mali, Zambia, Niger, Angola, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Rwanda and Ethiopia. Countries that began with initially low levels of human development are growing faster, on average, which indicates that they are catching up. However, the pace has slowed since 2010. Calculations using the UNDP gender indices indicate significant gender inequality in almost every African country. Gender gaps in income and non-income dimensions mean that women often experience lower human development outcomes than men. On average, African women achieve only 87 per cent of male human development levels. Social dimensions of gender equality The social dimensions of gender equality involving trends in health and education are key determinants of women’s equality and empowerment. Overall, gender inequality in social services translates into fewer opportunities for women, in particular, and society, as a whole, to achieve well-being. During the last decades, many African countries have seen the expansion of their citizens’ capabilities in the basic areas of health, education and other social services. These improvements have included women and girls, and today they have greater access to education at all levels, have better health, safely give birth to their children, and achieve higher life expectancy. Yet, many women face severe deprivations in their health due to such factors as early age marriage, sexual and physical violence, and the continued unacceptable high incidence of maternal mortality. The spectrum of violence affecting women includes domestic violence, intimate partner violence, rape, genital mutilation, intimidation, and additional threats to women´s personal security in periods of war and conflict. With respect to education, it is remarkable that near gender parity has been achieved in primary school enrolment. However, gender discrimination is still significant in secondary and tertiary education. The reasons why children do not attend school vary, but they are often associated with poverty, ethnicity, social exclusion, living in a rural area or slums, geographic remoteness, disasters, armed conflict, lack of basic facilities and poor-quality education. These barriers often interact with gender to create even greater disadvantages in learning opportunities. Women in African economies Another key determinant of gender equality is defined by women in the workplace and economic decision-making. Significant economic and workplace disparities between men and women continue to be the norm rather than the exception in many African countries. These inequalities are found across Africa in terms of access to economic assets, participation in the workplace, entrepreneurship opportunities, and use of and benefits from natural resources and the environment. In addition, women are more likely to be found in vulnerable employment with weak regulation and limited social protection due to differences in education and the mismatch between women’s skills and those demanded by the labour market. This in turn pushes women into the informal economy. It is estimated, using survey data for 2004 to 2010, that the share of non-agricultural informal employment in sub-Saharan Africa is about 66 per cent of all female employment. Increased female participation in the labour market has not meant increased opportunities in high paying jobs or enterprises. A gender wage gap outside agriculture is pervasive across all labour markets in sub-Saharan Africa, where, on average, the unadjusted gender pay gap is estimated at 30 per cent. Thus, for every $1 earned by men in manufacturing, services and trade, women earn 70 cents. Gaps in earnings between women and men are influenced by parameters such as age, occupation type, education, parenthood and marriage. Because social norms and beliefs assign African women and girls the primary responsibility for care and domestic work, women, on average, spend twice as much time as men on domestic work - child and elderly care, cooking, cleaning, and fetching water and wood. In sub-Saharan Africa, 71 per cent of the burden of collecting water for households falls on women and girls. As the economic status of women improves, so does the econom

While there is a significant and burgeoning body of literature on (paid) domestic work in India, much of which explores the broader context of migration within which this labour often takes place, very little looks at domestic workers’ commutes – daily or regular travel between home and work which is similarly linked to processes of neoliberalism and urban development. At the same time, much of the wider literature on commuting – which has been conducted mainly in Northern contexts – fails to properly consider the experience of commuting; furthermore, this literature often paints a rather rosy picture of commuting – as a complex mobility strategy or a space for thinking, relaxing, and socialising – which does not generally fit with the situation in India. This thesis, then, aims to fill this gap and offer a corrective to the wider literature on commuting by providing a rich and detailed account of the everyday lives and experiences of commuting domestic workers in Kolkata. In doing so, it contributes to wider sociological debates about work, precarity, and time/labour intensification. Drawing on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Kolkata and rural West Bengal and utilising novel methodological approaches and tools (multi-sited and ‘moving’ ethnography), I explore the experience of commuting for domestic workers in Kolkata – in other words, what it is like to undertake these journeys, which are often long and arduous, and what it is like to combine them with a heavy burden of paid and unpaid domestic work. I also draw attention to the embedded and cumulative nature of commuting, illustrating how commuting affects other areas of workers’ lives and making a case for commuting as a category of analysis. The commute, as we shall see, requires careful and constant negotiation: it involves time and money, and it takes a serious toll on workers’ health and relationships, contributing to extreme time pressure and often causing problems for workers, with employers and with husbands and families. Overall, the thesis highlights the intense insecurity commuters face, as well as the pragmatism with which they manage this insecurity in their day-to-day lives. At work and at home, commuters make everyday bargains and trade-offs, often swapping one form of precarity for another; the language of ‘adjustment’ and the question, ki korbo? (what will I do? What else can I do?), is, as we shall see, a constant refrain in their accounts. The thesis also shows, however, that while the experience of commuting is predominantly articulated by workers as one of pain and suffering (koshto), and all those who can give it up after a certain point do so, workers are, at the same time, forging networks and solidarities through commuting, which not only help them to endure the structural burdens of commuting and paid/unpaid domestic work but may, in future, also help them to bargain for better conditions of work.

This study examines the relationship between senior international students’ demographic characteristics, institutional contexts, and internship participation in U.S. higher education institutions. Despite universities’ emphasis on preparing globally competent, workforce-ready graduates, international students may face limited access to career preparation opportunities (Calonge et al., 2023; Lin, 2023). Guided by Astin’s Input-Environment-Output Model, Social Cognitive Career Theory, and Experiential Learning Theory, the researchers conducted a quantitative secondary-data analysis using 2019–2020 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) data. Descriptive statistics assessed trends in internship participation, while logistic regression explored predictive relationships between student demographics, institutional factors, and participation rates. Among 920 students, 78% reported completing, currently participating in, or planning an internship. Participation was highest among students from Africa/Sub-Saharan regions (92.3%) and Asia (84.6%), followed by Europe (83.2%). Regression analyses revealed no statistically significant effects of gender, nationality, institutional type, or classification on internship engagement, except for students majoring in Computer Science or Civil Engineering, who demonstrated higher participation, likely due to program-specific internship requirements. These findings indicate that international students’ internship engagement is generally equitable across demographic and institutional categories but highlight opportunities for institutions to strengthen career-preparation support. The study provides evidence-based insights for higher education practitioners and researchers, supporting initiatives to enhance international student career development and experiential learning experiences. This research contributes to understanding factors influencing internship participation and offers a foundation for future studies on workforce readiness and global student engagement.

In the field of resource management, the importance of understanding how policy affects people is now recognized as a fundamental aspect of sustainable management. This perspective underlies this study of how management policies within the British Columbia commercial fisheries have affected the Nuxalk Nation, located on the central coast of British Columbia. Though their contemporary participation in the commercial fisheries has been extensive, this community has witnessed a substantial decline in participation, roughly a 95% decline since 1953. Today about 12 community members hold commercial fishing licenses. Findings suggest that the virtual collapse of the local commercial fishery extends well beyond the visible losses such as employment, fishing boats, and related income. At a social and cultural level, the Nuxalkmc have witnessed changes in their ability to access and exchange traditional resources, engage in social and kinship networks, and perform acts of generalized reciprocity so important to social capital and resilience elsewhere. This study examines these dimensions by using theories of social capital and the informal economy as tools for unearthing the less visible and unaccounted losses in the Nuxalk Nation. Findings call for a reconsideration of the priority paid to direct versus indirect losses (wherein the latter may be more consequential than the former), and where the cultural and social consequences in particular may constitute what is elsewhere referred to as a ‘cascading’ loss. This study employs two primary research methods. First, we undertake a comprehensive review of relevant fisheries policies and historic information to evaluate the distinction between commercial and food fisheries. Second, semi-structured interviews with forty-one members of the Nuxalk Nation were conducted gather local articulations about social, cultural and economic changes associated with decreased involvement in the commercial fisheries.

The main concern of this paper is how inequalities are implicated in the capacity individuals have to deal with changes in their work. The ability to deal with change - to seek it out, go with it, benefit from it - is a key aspect of neo-liberal discourse on the contemporary economy. Yet, there is little recognition within this discourse of the different capacities individuals have to initiate or respond to work change. This paper draws attention to such differences, and adds to arguments challenging the flexibilization and individualization encouraged by neo-liberal accounts of the economy. In particular, the paper highlights the two main strategies individuals are advised to adopt in managing employment change – lifelong learning and networking. We identify and provide paradigmatic examples of four profiles of work change: flows and eddies for the advantaged, swamps and whirlpools for the disadvantaged. Our research suggests that attention to how individuals negotiate changes in their employment will help to illuminate the dense and complex character of socially embedded work trajectories, as well as the intricate role of inequality in structuring the processes of change.