CGHE Webinar 22

Employability in higher education: tensions, risks and alternatives

Date: Thursday, 14 July 2016 12:30 pm - 2:00 pm

Location: Room 901, UCL Institute of Education

Speaker(s):

Tristan McCowan, IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society

The employability agenda in higher education has spread from its original base in the Anglo-Saxon countries to become a veritable global phenomenon. While to a large extent it is endorsed by supranational agencies, nation states, institutions and students alike, it nevertheless presents some highly problematic implications for universities.

This seminar starts by outlining examples of employability provision in higher education and their implications from a recent research project in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Next, there is a normative analysis of the question, highlighting three dimensions: the implications for equality of opportunity, given middle-class capture of employability enhancing activities; the ethical relevance for universities, and the impact on the moral and civic development of students; and the coherence of the agenda with the fundamental purposes of the university. Attention to these three factors demands a serious rethinking of the practice of employability in higher education.

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Professor Tristan McCowan

Tristan McCowan is Professor of International Education at the Institute of Education, University College London. His work focuses on higher education in the international context, including issues of access, curriculum, alternative models and sustainability. His CGHE Project 9 explored the supranational space in higher education – the ways in which this space is formed and developed above or beyond nation-states, the actors that form this space, and the resource and knowledge flows within this space, and between the national, regional, and supranational spaces.