Producing New Workers: Quality, equality and employability in higher education

By L. Morley. 2001

325 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This article addresses employability as a performance indicator in higher education. Questions are raised about the values behind seemingly neutral indicators of value, and whether the same employability attributes have similar economic and professional values for different social groups. A central argument is that employability is a socially decontextualised signifier in so far as it overlooks how social structures such as gender, race, social class and disability interact with labour market opportunities. The article also interrogates hegemonic assumptions behind the concept of key or core skills in higher education.

Subfields: Education, Political Science and International Relations

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bde0f1bf33a7c706a86da8eb2e5d38ad89031fe9

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Citations in the corpus

Engineering students’ experiences of transition from study to work (2010, unknown): “demanded? How should educational systems develop to meet these demands?’ (Clarke and Winch 2006; DeWeert 1997; Morley 2001; Teichler 1999; Yorke 2007).”
Key Competencies of Tourism Graduates: The Employers' Point of View (2009, background): “Some feel that this might lead to a certain distraction from academic education and that corporate interests could start to play a too powerful role (Morley, 2001).”
Rethinking graduate employability: the role of capital, individual attributes and context (2018, background): “This has resulted in graduates taking longer to find their first job and the under-employment of graduates as many are forced to accept jobs that do not require a tertiary qualification (Morley 2001).”
Graduates' employment and the discourse of employability: a critical analysis (2006, background): “(Morley, 2001, p. 132) The emphasis on employability and skills can also be seen as a part of the ‘projects of masculinity’ of late modernism (Leonard, 2000, p. 181) in its emphasis on a rational, technical and utilitarian construction of higher education study.”
Employability in higher education: what it is, what it is not (2006, background): “Some commentators have questioned these assumptions, asking whether human capital is the key to economic well-being (Morley, 2001) and whether ‘employability’ is anything but an empty concept.”
Are students customers? TQM and marketing perspectives (2007, background): “Under this interpretation, TQM, and the student-as-customer notion more generally, can be interpreted as part of a social process that is designed to alter the power relations in the university system to the benefit of particular interest groups (Morley, 2001).”
Employing discourse: universities and graduate ‘employability’ (2010, background): “…and earnings is neither direct nor immediate – it is also significantly influenced by other factors, most notably class, ethnicity, age and gender (Morley 2001; Elias and Purcell 2002; Purcell, Wilton, and Elias 2007), all of which are absent from the government’s employability discourse.”
Enhancing graduate employability: best intentions and mixed outcomes (2006, background): “From a psychological perspective, Perkins and Salomon (1994) have provided evidence that the anticipated transfer of learning experiences to new settings occurs to varying degrees. For example, ‘near transfer’ may occur when a student encounters similar issues in an examination paper that have been ”