Linkedin, platforming labour, and the new employability mandate for universities

ABSTRACT

Students, academics and university administrators are increasingly using and producing digital platforms, including social media. This paper focuses on LinkedIn to start tackling the question of the effects on higher education as a sector, its actors and the established social practices. It argues that LinkedIn moves beyond the passivity of advertising to its users towards actively structuring digital labour markets, in which it strategically includes universities and its constituents. By introducing the term ‘qualification altmetrics’, the paper suggests that LinkedIn is building a global marketplace for skills to run in parallel to, or instead of university degrees. Qualification altmetrics might challenge the established practices of knowledge production and valuation.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital platform
• higher education
• labour market
• employability
• LinkedIn

Acknowledgement

I wish to thank Chris Muellerleile and Nick Lewis for their helpful comments in developing this paper; and to Susan Robertson and Roger Dale for their support in this research. The usual disclaimer applies. This paper was developed with the financial support of the European Commission FP7 People programme: Marie Curie Initial Training Network UNIKE (Universities in Knowledge Economies), grant agreement number 317452.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Janja Komljenovic http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5951-5189

Notes

1 EBITDA are ‘earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (used as an indicator of the overall profitability of a business)’ (Oxford Dictionary 2016).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by FP7 People: Marie-Curie Actions [grant number 317452].