Employability and higher education: the follies of the ‘Productivity Challenge’ in the Teaching Excellence Framework

Abstract

This article considers questions of ‘employability’, a notion foregrounded in the Green and White Papers on the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). The paper first questions government imperatives concerning employability and suggests a series of mismatches that are evident in the rhetorics in this area. This summary opens up elements of what I am calling the first ‘folly’ in the field. The second section of the paper considers recent research with individual academics engaged in employability activity. This research suggests another series of mismatches in the aims and outcomes of ‘employability initiatives’ and opens up a further series of ‘follies’ in the day-to-day practices of academics and students’ responses to them. The third section of the paper turns to academics’ reports of student behaviour in relation to the outcomes of their degree. This section develops an argument that relates to the final ‘folly’ associated with the current focus on employability. I argue that students’ focus on outcomes (which at face value suggests they have internalized the importance of employment) is contributing to the production of graduates who do not have the dispositions that employers – when interviewed – say that they want. The highly performative culture of higher education, encouraged by the same metrics that will be extended through the TEF, is implicated then in not preparing students for the workplace.

Keywords:

• Employability
• National Student Survey
• New Public Management
• policy rhetorics
• performativity

Acknowledgements

With many thanks to Ian Stronach and to the anonymous reviewers of a previous version of this article.

Notes

1. This paper does not differentiate between Higher Education Institutions (teaching led; research led; HE in FE). Such work would almost certainly throw up further nuances in the arguments presented here.

2. Tensions in respect of such moves date back to at least 1872 when Nietzsche lamented: ‘The true task of education, in this view, is to form people who are, as the French say, au courant, the same way a coin is courant, valid currency’ (16). Economistic metaphors continue to abound; in a more recent commentary Anderson (2014) notes: universities are being reduced to ‘so many sales outlets for customers in need of livery for the market’ (39).

3. KIS (Key Information Set) data contains 18 items of information including data from the NSS and information about employment status/salary six months after completing a programme.

4. Enshrined in the title, for example, of the White Paper: Success as a Knowledge Economy: Teaching Excellence, Social Mobility and Student Choice, BIS (2016).

5. This work, funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme, included extended semi-structured interviews with 35 academics in the humanities in universities across the North-West. Volunteers to be interviewed included heads of department, programme leaders, module leaders and staff with responsibility (at different levels) for overseeing the NSS. A snowballing technique was employed in relation to identifying potential interviewees. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim.

6. Q19: The course has helped me to present myself with confidence;

Q20: My communication skills have improved;

Q21: As a result of my course, I feel confident in tackling unfamiliar problems.

KIS (Key Information Set) data contains 18 items of information including data from the NSS and information about employment status/salary six months after completing a programme.

7. English degrees are graded, in descending order: first, upper second, lower second, third, pass, fail.

8. This is in spite of research about what makes a difference to employers, as summarized by Collini (2016) ‘(1) perceived standing of the university they attended, (2) their field of study and (3) (a distant third) the class of their degree result’ (34). As Morley (2007) describes, socio-economic issues still have strong effects in the UK in respect of which university, and which course, students access. This would suggest another ‘disconnect’ in respect of what students think they need to do and what actually makes a difference.

9. In approximately 170 pages of text.