1. Employability in higher education: tensions, risks and alternatives
Tristan McCowan
CGHE seminar
UCL Institute of Education, 15 July 2016

2. Historical emergence of employability
Knowledge economy
Neo-liberalism
Human capital theory

3. Media hype “The skills gap: who should be taking responsibility?”
(Telegraph (UK), 23/7/15)
“South Africa's unemployment crisis cripples prospects for young graduates”
(AfricaNews, 1/7/16]
“Thousands of graduates working in jobs that don't require any qualifications” (Independent (UK), 1/7/16]
“Skills shortage forces manufacturers to rethink human capital strategy”
(Business Day, Nigeria, 27/2/14]
“Uganda's unemployed graduates held back by skills gap”
[Guardian, 16/1/14]

4. Global Employability University Ranking 2013 (THE)
Institution
Country 1
Harvard University
USA 2
University of Cambridge
Great Britain 3
University of Oxford 4
California Institute of Technology 5
Yale University 6
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 7
Stanford University 8
Columbia University 9
Princeton University 10
University of Toronto
Canada 11
Technische Universität München
Germany 12
The University of Tokyo
Japan

5. Adoption of employability
World Bank; OECD; UNESCO; Bologna process
Supranational organisations
e.g. UK, Australia
National governments
e.g. University of the West of England , Robert Gordon University
Institutions

6. What is employability?
“a set of achievements – skills, understandings and personal attributes – that makes graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations, which benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy.” (Yorke 2004) N.B. Employability not employment
Yorke, M. (2004). Learning and Employability, Book 1. LTSN Support Network,
ESECT Publication.

7. Conceptualisations Skills Graduateness Graduate identity
Graduate attributes

9. Centre for Entrepreneurial Studies, Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta

11. Employability is a valid aim of the university only as long as it is:
Consonant with the central purpose of the university
Ethical
Efficient
Equitable
Choosing the rules, or playing within the rules?
(Swift 2003)

12. Value of higher education
Intrinsic
Instrumental
Positional

13. Consonance with the central purpose of the university
The elusive essence of the university
A tentative principle:
“the governing purpose [of universities] involves extending human understanding through open-ended enquiry” (Collini 2012: 92)

14. 2. Ethics
a) How does the promotion of employability affect society? The overall impact of promoting employability on society is debatable, depending on one’s moral and political positioning in relation to neoliberal capitalism, i.e. as regards the acceptability of socio-economic inequalities, the value of wealth accumulation and consumption, etc. However, given the ‘rules of the game’, there are strong individual interests in developing employability - particularly an expansive rather than a narrow form. b) Does employability promote ethical action in graduates? Caveat: Company-first employability

15. 3. Efficiency What aspects of employability can universities promote?
Are there other institutions better placed to do so?
Are there any costs?
Caveat:
Zero-sum game employability

16. 4. Equity
Three stages of inequity
access
student experience
outcomes