Cloudy1′s Blog
Just another WordPress.com weblogEmployability – the new focus?
On placement it became apparent that the favourite phrase of the Higher Education institutions is “employability“, but why and what does it actually mean? If the university is to concentrate on employability this means that students are to be educated on the skills used to get them a job and allow them to easily progress into the world of work. However, the way that each institution is planning to tackle this subject can be very different. The Scottish Funding Council is providing additional funding to each Institution specifically to deal with Employability, an area highlighted as needing more input by the Quality Assuring Council, over a total of 4 years. The wholes sector is supposed to be engaged in this enhancement theme and will be evaluated on 4 key areas:
1. Strategy 2. Staff 3. Student 4. Employers
You will find in every institution that new posts have been created for employability advisers but how can we really measure if the plans put in place are successful? Surely the outcomes will not truly be seen until the plans are embedded into the framework of the institution, which will take longer than the 3 years given so far? Are HE institutions just ticking a box in order to receive more money?
What will actual employers gain from this added focus? Will all HE students graduate with the perfect ability to gain employment and show the difference between them and other non HE candidates? Personally I feel that the areas being looked at by the HE institutions should be being tackled at High School levels. Here students could gain the tools to be able to reflect on their skills and qualities even if they don’t decide to go on to further education. Should it really be used as another way of making HE elitist?
Even some academics do not see the value in extra time being taken away from the teaching curriculum to discuss career development planning and this would certainly be a big hurdle for the employability officers to overcome – selling a product that the Government has already decreed must be approached or the funding will not be given and one that the HE institution as a whole has bought in to!
Or is it even more sinister than this – on a recent BBC News Programme a University openly admitted to no longer offering studies in areas which were not thought to have vocational presence, in other words if there was no direct link to the employment opportunities after graduation this University felt there was no need to offer the course, the example they used was History! Are our HE institutions going to look directly at their Destination Leaver statistics and decide that they could be higher if they removed the lesser “employment profitable” courses? I hope not!
I know I totally agree. At the art college, where the very mention of “employability” seems entirely out of place for people training as conceptual artiist/silversmiths/textile designers etc, there was a real push to embed it in the curriciulum. Unsurprisingly there was resistance amongst academics. We’re almost back to the problems with the principles of CareerBox education programme – a one size fits all approach designed to “tick boxes” and designating everyone with the same “needs” The whole point of higher education appears to be changing – it now seems less and less about studying to a subject to an abstract level to what job you can get at the end. I feel it encourages a consumer approach to education and by allocating funding to “employment profitable” courses and institutions the government are taking us down a very controlling and sinister path. Traditionally universities were places where creativity was encouraged and provided a space for people to grow academically. But, I think there is a place for careers education in uni’s! I am not sure how careers ed and employability are the same or are they two different things??