Employability agenda isn’t working

Source: Ian Summers

The exercise’s overall impact, especially when couched in the boardroom demotic of ‘action plans’, was to promote market behaviour

First-year history students at my university take a course titled Making History that teaches them about historical research and writing.

It comprises 20 twice-weekly lectures, given by various colleagues, on broad topics such as historiography, periodisation, causation, primary sources and reading critically, and 10 weekly seminars applying those topics to particular historical subjects - the American Revolution in my case.

This year, though, one seminar required students to “prepare three things: a CV; a paragraph identifying its weaknesses; an action plan for how you are going to address these weaknesses”.

Seeing these instructions, it struck me how far the “employability agenda” has progressed - to the point that it is now claiming time on syllabi at the expense of academic subjects and inculcating market values at the expense of free and critical thinking.

Making History and other modules have long integrated academic learning with transferable skills, such as finding and analysing information, then reporting on it in individual and group presentations, and in cogent, grammatical and correctly referenced essays.

The CV exercise, however, occupied the entire 50-minute session, involved no historical learning, and indeed appeared in the schedule without any relationship to previous or subsequent seminars. One out of 10 seminars devoted to employability may not seem much, but when academic study is entirely cast out of the classroom, what message does that send about its value? And when we introduce mooted “employability modules” and work placements, how much room will be left for academic endeavour?

The message given by sacrificing syllabus time to the employability agenda was reinforced by the manner in which the CV exercise was to be done. Inviting students to present their CVs in front of each other forced them to think of themselves as competitors - and even, for all but one of them, as “losers”. Surely in the first semester of the first year they would learn better through cooperation? But perhaps the idea is to normalise job-market rivalry as early as possible. Requiring students to identify and devise “action plans” to address their “weaknesses” also legitimises the notion that they must adapt to the needs of business, as opposed, for example, to business adapting to the needs of individuals, communities and countries. That effect was enhanced by an absence of attention to strengths (which, if implicit in the CVs, was soon undermined by the explicit focus on “weaknesses”). The overall impact, especially when couched in the boardroom demotic of “action plans”, was to promote market values and behaviour, rather than making them something students might want to question or protest about.

Universities used to talk about education for education’s sake and opening people’s minds. Now we talk increasingly about education for employment’s sake, with the methods utilised increasingly closing people’s minds.

It is difficult for universities to resist teaching employability when league tables measure how many graduates are in full-time employment six months after receiving their degrees, and with ministers reminding us of graduates’ need to pay off the enormous fees that the government has imposed. Perversely, the message being sent is that we are hurting ourselves if we encourage students to travel, take time over their life choices, pick unconventional vocations in the voluntary sector or the arts, study postgraduate degrees, or do anything other than push them into the rat race right away.

But individual academics can help to keep alternative thinking alive. I asked my seminar group, for example, to take ownership of the learning process (a pedagogical trend that seems to have all but disappeared since business got higher education in a headlock) and to reflect on and critique the CV exercise they were required to do (though I stressed repeatedly that I have no more right to indoctrinate them than does Vince Cable or his lobbyists).

Then, remembering Lord Mandelson’s characterisation of students as “consumers of the higher education experience”, I let mine choose whether or not to publicise their CVs, identify their weaknesses and produce action-plan-based solutions to make them “fit for purpose”. I gave the opportunity to those who wanted it, of course, but felt it unconscionable to force it upon those who did not. Five did, five did not. I also took a poll: all 10 students agreed that employability was best left to careers officers and not placed on the syllabus.

Another five did not turn up to class, perhaps voting with their feet. We are supposed to report absentees, but, as forcing employability on students would be treating them more as products than consumers, I decided to respect their choices.

Do you have a similar story? Email david.matthews@tsleducation.com