Higher education and labour integration: Spanish graduates with disabilities and professional competence

Despite the rising number of students with disabilities who graduate from universities all over the world, they still come upon major barriers to achieving favourable placement in the regular job market. The figures show lower job placement rates among university graduates with disabilities than among their non-disabled peers. In order to deal with this situation, in recent decades Spain has made major legislative inroads to encourage companies’ social responsibility in the sphere of disabilities. These efforts have clearly borne fruit, but studies show that there is still a long road ahead before achieving a legislative framework that guarantees the full workplace inclusion of individuals with disabilities. Likewise, in the past 15 years, Spanish universities have gradually shifted their pedagogical approaches in order to meet these students’ needs and guarantee equal opportunities and equity in the academic setting. Nonetheless, research highlights that there are still barriers in academia which place these students at a disadvantage when it comes time for their job placement. The goal of this chapter is to understand the job placement difficulties faced by Spanish university graduates with disabilities and consequently to offer proposals to improve their training and job placement prospects.