What does employability mean to you?

Following the introduction of the Office for Students scrutiny of Higher Education (HE) performance has increased. This reflects changes in government attitudes towards HE, the financial costs of degree level study and feeds into a political and journalistic rhetoric of ‘low value’ and ‘poor quality’ degrees (Hinds, 2019. Morton and Weston, 2023). To address this challenge a common response within the sector is to increase activity and resource to improve performance in key areas but does not often consider academic perspectives.

A small-scale phenomenological study by Knapton and Chrostowska (n.p.) within a post-92 university investigated stakeholder understanding of the term ‘employability’. Alongside nuanced interpretations of ‘employability’ by academics and professional support staff perspectives of employability as a ‘moral endeavour’ were uncovered that had not been found through the literature review. This workshop would use stimulus materials to explore perspectives of ‘employability’ with a view to identifying ways of navigating the tensions that exists between the external drivers of OfS, government and media and the internal motivations of academics in our classroom practice and programme leadership roles.

Hinds, D. (2019). Education secretary calls for an end to low value degrees Gov.UK Department for Education. Available at Education Secretary calls for an end to low value degrees - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Morton, B. and Watson, I. (2023). Poor quality university courses face limits on student numbers BBC. Available at Poor quality university courses face limits on student numbers - BBC News