Article 2020

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

LM
Lundgren-Resenterra, Mariangela
 KP
Kahn, Peter E.
Journal of Critical Realism
Journal · Vol. 19 · Issue 4 · pp. 415-431
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. © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Keywords

Author Keywords

Higher education employability collective agency collective reflexivity critical realism post-truth narratives

Index Keywords

Author Affiliations
Geneva School of Business Administration, University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Western Switzerland, Geneva, GE, Switzerland
Centre for Higher Education Studies, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, Merseyside, United Kingdom
Funding & Acknowledgements
No funding information
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