Higher Education and Workforce Development

ENHANCING STUDENT EMPLOYABILITY:

Higher Education and Workforce Development

Ninth Quality in Higher Education International Seminar in collaboration with ESECT and The Independent. Birmingham27th-28th January 2005

A Political and Moral Economy of Employability

Neil Moreland,
Research Fellow, ESECT, The Open University

Introduction

First, I provide a synopsis of Employability as it has been articulated within the ESECT project. I then go on to provider an analysis of ESECT and employability by making clear the underlying assumptions of this paper. I then go on to consider the employability agenda and its preoccupation with the Self – individuals – as the key focus of activity. This will then lead to a consideration of possible ways in which the employability agenda and actions can be colonised for critical pedagogic activities.

What is Employability and ESECT?

Though the relationship between higher education and the economy is a longstanding one, employability is a term that has become more widespread recently in English Higher Education through the work of the Enhancing Student Employability Co-ordination Team (ESECT) drawn from a range of organisations, including universities, assessment and career education and recruitment organisations (see ESECT is an English national project linked to the staff development focused ‘Higher Education Academy’ that was designed specifically to promote good practice in work related learning (Knight & Yorke, 2004).

Employability within ESECT has been defined as, ‘Aset of achievements, understandings and personal attributes that make individuals more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations’ (Yorke, 2004). Achievements in the definition not only includes academic achievement, but also includes work-oriented activities such as work experience/placements and projects whose focus is derived from work defined problems (e.g. Rossin & Hyland, 2003). Similarly, the term understandings refers to knowledge and insight covering such things as the current and future job activities and prospects of graduates from their degree subjects, including self-employment and entrepreneurship (see e.g. Moreland, 2004). The third outcome of a graduate employability experience is an awareness and promotion of personal attributes. These are not just any personal attributes, however, but those personal attributes such as enthusiasm, willingness to innovate and attentiveness that have been identified in employer surveys (e.g. (Harvey, Moon, Geall, & Bower, 1997) as well as wider discourses promulgated by employer organisations such as the Federation of Small Businesses ( the Confederation of British industry ( and the Institute of Directors (

The Underlying Assumptions of the Analysis

Please accept my apologies if these assumptions appear to be statements of the blindingly obvious, but it is important to follow the assumptions through!

We live in a global capitalist society

In political terms, and with the exceptions of a very small number of societies such as North Korea, we live world wide in many versions of capitalism (Hutton & Giddens, 2000). Essential to these different versions, however, is the extraction of surplus value that we more commonly conceptualise as the making of profits (Baiman, 2001). In addition, however, the capitalism is becoming a joined-up global phenomenon.What is unique about the current global situation is the establishment of a global economy where, ‘strategic, core activities, including innovation, finance and corporate management, function on a planetary scale in real time’ (Carnoy, 2002: 129). That is, time and place have to some extent been condensed (and made less important as ‘interferences’) by organisations, companies and governments based in different countries and continents (Soros, 2000). A key supportive element of these globalizing activities is the ‘technological infrastructure provided by telecommunications, information systems, microelectronics machinery and computer based transportation’ (Carnoy, 2002: 129). Thus, whilst economies are now global, they are also more complex.

I take it as axiomatic that capitalism is in a state of continuous experimentation (e.g. the creation of new companies and business process reengineering within existing ones) in the search for the competitive edge and (ultimately) increased profits (Thrift, 2001). That being so, there is a role for the State to provide a legal and social environment for this experimentation and ongoing development to occur.

The Role of the State is Central to Capitalism

Following Rueschmeyer and Evans (1985), “we consider the State to be a set of organisations invested with the authority to make binding decisions for people and organisations juridically located in a particular territory and to implement those decisions using, if necessary, force” (Rueschmeyer & Evans, 1985: 47). It is important to understand that the State is more than the government of the day, for the State, in addition, consists of the continuous administrative, legal, bureaucratic and coercive systems that attempt not only to structure relationships between civil society and public authorities in a society but also to structure many crucial relationships in civil society as well (To which we will return).

Lest it be thought that the Sate is solely the functional arm of capitalism, we must note that States have many pressures upon them, and have other roles to fulfil (Offe, 1984) such as public health and order that ‘naturally’ are not the concerns of individual capitalists. The State too has a legitimation function, expressed in welfare and other activities designed to ensure the loyalty of the population for the systems of production and exchange. Such activities potentially can siphon off profits, leading to a fiscal crisis of the State (Habermas, 1976) and ongoing political tensions and debates over the size and nature of State expenditure on social welfare and other activities such as education.

These tensions and contradictions can and do operate on at least two levels. The first level is that of social integration - the level of the individual and their associated groups who may have alternative cultures, values and behaviours that mitigate against their active involvement and commitment to the capitalist social relations of production (the social relationships between owners, managers and employees). Here it is necessary to curb particular behaviours (e.g. ASBOs) as well as promote appropriate standards of behaviours (as we shall see below, the employability project is an example of this latter approach).

The second level is at the level of system integration, which we can define as the relationships between institutions and subsystems of society (Lockwood, 1976). A key contradiction exists in capitalist states between increasing demands for welfare benefits and services and the costs of such services, and the necessity for the State to develop taxation and other mechanisms (e.g. graduate tuition fees) to pay for such benefits and services. Education is not immune from such pressures, as we have seen by the crisis of rationality (government demands higher education fees, whilst at the same time setting targets for higher participation rates in higher education) and motivation (higher fees potentially deterring students from poorer social backgrounds, despite an emphasis upon inclusion as a social goal).

This paper accepts that there are significant changes occurring in employment with companies in the UK, with ‘work flexibalization, casualization and fragmentation’ (Amoore, 2004: 175). Employment opportunities and forms are becoming restructured through the development of ‘lean and flexible’ firms requiring the smaller numbers of core employees who in turn have to be flexible in their job and task skills and patterns. Along side this trend to a smaller directly employed workforce there is an increasing amount of the use of alternative employment forms such as consultancies, short-term contracts, sub-contracting and the like (Baiman, 2001; McMaster, 2001). Ross sees such developments as a ‘deluxe form of temping’ (Ross, 2001: 78) and another form of sweated labour as work is farmed out to sub-contractors (Ross, 2001: 83)

Whatever one thinks of such developments, it is clear that such changes are double edged, in that they give rise to both opportunities and risks. In terms of opportunities, the prospects are there for individuals to take an increased responsibility for their own lives. As Ulrich Beck puts it,

‘The ethic of individual self-fulfilment and achievement are the most powerful current in modern society. The choosing, deciding, shaping, human being who aspires to be the author of his or her own life, the creator of an individual identity, is the central character of our time (Beck, 2000: 165).

At the same time, we have to recognise that, alongside individualism,

Insecurity, risk, acceleration and change are words that are increasingly used to describe contemporary social and economic life (Beck, 1992)

Whilst such descriptions of modern life are not uniform in their effects upon societies and their members, higher education increasingly is seen to have a duty to prepare students in such a way that they are able to enter and progress in their respective fields of work endeavour with an understanding of such trends and developments in contemporary life as well as the skills and outlooks necessary to operate and flourish in such environments.

ESECT as a form of Social Integration

In an insightful book, Roger Dale (1989) suggested that the major ideological way in which capitalism works through the political system is by promoting a form of rationality that both promotes particular ways of perceiving social welfare, and constraining possible alternatives. Autonomy is allowed, but varies according to the degree to which social policies are accepted (licensed autonomy) or need to be supervised in their implementation (regulated autonomy). In developing this distinction, Dale suggests that the State, since the 1970s and the famous Ruskin Speech of the then Prime Minister Callaghan, has moved from a licensed to a more regulated autonomy in social welfare, including higher education (Dale, 1989: 15). That is, the growth of organisations such as the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA – see and the Higher Education Academy can be seen as a form of system coordination if not integration, for the powers of such bodies are not all-embracing as universities retain some independence.

In so far as the ESECT agenda is about assisting graduates to be better prepared to enter the world of work, it can be conceptualised as a form of system integration, defined as the degree to which separate parts of society (Education and the economy) are directly related to each other. The subordination of higher education to the world of work is not complete, and is unlikely ever to be so as there are other goals to higher education besides assisting the economy (e.g. see Robbins, 1963).

At the same time, however, ESECT can also be conceptualised as a form of social integration, as the concern of ESECT is to engender personal developments, and changes in the self-concepts of graduates so that she seek and enter work in an appropriate manner (Yorke & Knight, 2004). Conceived in this way, the promotion of such judgmental and action capabilities within an employability strategy in HE is a ‘supply side’ strategy (Mills, 2002). An employability strategy is designed to encourage the development of a graduate that better ‘fits’ this changing economic situation and developing job markets in ways that assist the individual to respond to such developments effectively. Employability, consequently, requires work-related learning across the lifespan. Employability, in effect, has at least three categories of higher education student in mind, these being:

• Adults and young people seeking to ‘position’ themselves with regard to the labour markets they wish to participate in
• Adults in work who have a need to update their skills and capabilities to remain employable;
• Adults who are out of work, and thus need re-qualification or additional qualifications to re-enter the workforce (Illeris, 2003: 174).

Whatever category of learner HE is concerned with (and it will often be all 3 at one and the same time), ESECT assumes the necessity for higher education to engage even more fully with work-related learning as well as subject-related study. As this paper places an emphasis upon self-knowledge that is missing in accounts of work-related learning, it is important to (briefly) understand the nature of the self, and the role the different aspects of the self play in effective work related learning.

Whilst there are a number of perspectives upon the self, and how to analyse it (Butt, 2004), the simple definition of the self favoured here is that of Layder (2004), who suggests that of the self may be defined as, ‘how a person regards themselves and how they, and others, relate to, or behave towards, themselves’.(Layder, 2004: 7). The self thus consists of knowledge about oneself (e.g. learning preferences) that is deployed by a person in the process of living out our daily lives. In turn, those daily lives have effects also for our self-concept, perhaps causing us to modify or substantiate our self-image. Layder confirms this when he says that, whilst: goes on to suggest that there are a number of key dimensions or properties to the self, including:

• The self is a centre of awareness, with executive agency and control;
• The self is (also) flexible and pliable, changing, evolving and developing over time and place (Layder, 2004: 7-8).

To these characteristics, we may add the one of reflexivity (an awareness of self and one’s interface and effects upon the world that can vary between shallowness and depth) considered an increasing feature in our late modern life (Giddins, 1991). In modern day global societies,

‘The individual is faced with a kaleidoscope of possibilities and choices, which present both threats and opportunities. This necessitates an increasing use of reflection, in which individuals look critically at their action and ask what they are making of themselves’ (Butt, 2004: 128).

The world is thus an exciting one of possibilities, but can also an anxious one of uncertainty and ambivalence, especially as commentators suggest that the societies that we live in are more and more accompanied by the ‘breakdown of tradition and the growing individualization of social relations’ (Webster, 2004: 7). At the same time, reflection and reflexivity, we know, is difficult (Clegg, 2004), though help is at hand within the many books concerned with reflection and learning (e. g. Brockbank, McGill, & Beech, 2002). We would add to this reflexivity the necessity for individuals to become self-regulated learners (Zimmerman, 2002) – self-directing and managing the processes of learning.

The critical education potential of ESECT

The last few points in the previous section point out the significance of self-managed and self-directed learning within the ESECT philosophy, for generating capable people at work able to operate independently as well as in teams allows at the same time the potential for more critical perspectives and activities related to work. Etzioni, for instance, suggests that we are seeing more lifestyle workers – people who use work as a means to allowing them to enjoy a particular life style. Etzioni sees this movement as one of voluntary simplicity (Etzioni, 1999), though it can involve new technologies to allow developments such as homeworking.

Self-managed learning, however, for many students has still to be learned. Staff in higher education, consequently, need to develop their understanding of the curriculum and pedagogic implications of such a learning climate, and assist students to achieve their independence as learners more fully than hitherto (Fleury, 2004). This is surely a goal worth aiming for, and which ESECT may be well set up to accomplish.

References

Amoore, L. (2004). Risk, reward and discipline at work. Economy and Society, 33(2), 174-196.

Baiman, R. P. (2001). Political economy and contemporary capitalism: radical perspectives on economic theory and policy. London: M. E. Sharpe.

Beck, U. (1992). Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage.

Beck, U. (2000). Living your own life in a runaway world: Individualisation, Globalisation and Politics. In W. Hutton & A. Giddens (Eds.), On the Edge: Living with Global Capitalism (pp. 164-174). London: Jonathan Cape.

Brockbank, A., McGill, I., & Beech, N. (2002). Reflective Learning in Practice. Aldershot: Gower.

Butt, T. (2004). Understanding People. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Carnoy, M. (2002). Globalization, Knowledge and the International Knowledge Economy. In D. Istance, H. G. Schuetze & T. Schuller (Eds.), International Perspectives on Lifelong Learning (pp. 129-140). Buckingham: SRHE and Open University Press.

Clegg, S. (2004). Critical Readings: Progress files and the production of the autonomous learner. Teaching in Higher Education, 9(3), 287-298.

Dale, R. (1989). The State and Education Policy. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Etzioni, A. (1999). Voluntary Simplicity: a New Social Movement. In W. E. Halal & K. B. Taylor (Eds.), 21st Century Economics (pp. 107-130). New York: St. Martin's Press.

Fleury, S. C. (2004). Critical Consciousness through a Critical Constructivist Pedagogy. In J. L. Kincheloe & D. E. Weil (Eds.), Critical Thinking and Learning (pp. 187-189). Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.

Giddins, A. (1991). Modernity and Self-Identity. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Habermas, J. (1976). Legitimation Crisis. London: Heinemann.

Harvey, L., Moon, S., Geall, V., & Bower, R. (1997). Graduate's work: organisation change and students' attributes. Birmingham: Centre for Research into Quality together with the Association of Graduate Recruiters.

Hutton, W., & Giddens, A. (2000). On the Edge: Living with Global Capitalism. London:: Jonathon Cape.

Illeris, K. (2003). Workplace learning and learning theory. Journal of Workplace Learning, 15(4), 167-178.

Knight, P., & Yorke, M. (2004). Learning, Curriculum and Employability in Higher Education. London: Routledge Farmer.

Layder, D. (2004). Social and Personal Identity. London

Sage.

Lockwood, D. (1976). Social Integration and System Integration. In G. Zollschan & W. E. Hirsch (Eds.), Social Change: Explorarions, Diagnoses and Conjectures. London: J. Wiley and Sons.

McMaster, R. (2001). The National Health Service, The 'Internal Market' and Trust. In J. B. Davis (Ed.), The Social Economics of Health Care (pp. 113-140). London: Routledge.

Mills, V. (2002). Employability, globalization and lifelong learning - a Scottish perspective. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 21(4), 347-356.

Moreland, N. (2004). Entrepreneurship and higher education: an employability perspective. York: LTSN/ESECT.

Offe, C. (1984). Contradictions of the Welfare State. Boston, Mass: MIT Press.

Robbins, L. (1963). Committe on Higher Education. London: HMSO.

Ross, A. (2001). No-Collar labour in America's 'New Economy'. In L. Panitch & C. Leys (Eds.), Working Classes Global Realities (pp. 77-88). London: Merlin Press.