Higher education in a post-truth era: whose agency is triggered by a focus on employability?

ABSTRACT

Employability has developed into a key component of the policies of higher education institutions (HEIs) worldwide, whereby students convert into consumers and knowledge morphs into a marketable commodity that supports a supply of qualified graduates to a precarious labour market. In such a market, employability is influenced by post-truth narratives of marketization to sell education. This conceptual paper draws on critical realist theorizing of structure and agency to discuss how commodified programmes of higher education constitute a narrow view of academic knowledge serving mainly corporations and their financial interests. It argues that HEIs could establish programmes of education that foster collective reflexivity to prepare students to make contributions as agents working within collectivities to enhance human emancipation, rather than merely as ‘employable’ individuals serving the needs of the labour market. Such an approach to education could have significant value in enabling HEIs to support more actively the flourishing of society.

KEYWORDS:

• Collective agency
• critical realism
• collective reflexivity
• employability
• higher education
• post-truth narratives

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Mariangela Lundgren-Resenterra has worked in the Swiss education sector for over 25 years, first as a teacher and Director at a secondary-level school in Geneva and then as Deputy-Director in the Higher Education Department of the Geneva Government. She works currently as a lecturer at the Geneva School of Business Administration, where she teaches Human Resource Management and Organisational Behaviour. She is interested in research that applies the critical realist approach to personal and organizational development.

Peter Kahn is Director of the Centre for Higher Education Studies, University of Liverpool. He is Director of Studies for a fully online professional doctorate (EdD) in Higher Education. His research is focused on applications of the critical realist paradigm to the study of higher education, covering such areas as reflexivity of staff and students, employability, and professional education. He is Editor of Teaching in Higher Education.