In this article Ricky Gee of Nottingham Trent University explores the challenges of ’employability’ for higher education graduates by comparing it to a rigged game of ‘musical chairs’.

The continual post-industrialisation of western society has brought forth the marketisation, massification, elongation and credentialization of the education sector.  In the UK entry to higher education has become normalised for many students leaving statutory learning at 18, pro-longing full-time entry into the labour market and pathways to adulthood. 

Given this scenario, including the trebling of university fees in 2012, the employability of graduates has become a major concern for universities to illustrate the ‘worth’ of a degree in a neoliberal milieu.  Much work has occurred in the sector to ensure that degree courses have ‘work integrated learning’ and skills audits to prepare students for ‘high skilled’ destinations, now policed by the Office for Students.  Such endeavours work on the individual to provide them with ‘graduate attributes’, concentrating on the agency of the student to navigate toward desired destinations. 

I would like to provide an analogue here to reduce this state of affairs to a game of musical chairs, with chairs representing ‘graduate destinations’ and the players graduates.  What is apparent in this comparison is that there are far more players than there are chairs. The current solution presented by universities is to train the players/graduates to be increasingly more agile to play the game.  If only the game was that fair, there are some players that have been given a head start in the game, whether that is going to a prestigious university or being privately educated.  This is very apparent with the Civil Service Fast Track Scheme, where only 3.8% of applicants were accepted for the scheme in 2016, however this raises to 10.6% if an Oxbridge graduate, and 28.6% if privately educated. 

This analogue highlights that it is impossible for all to be ‘employable’ for graduate work, and that a person’s social position is as much a marker of employability as their learned ‘agility’.  There is much research within the sociology literature to highlight how a person’s entry and position in the labour market is influenced by personal characteristics such as class, gender and ethnicity.  This scenario begs the question of how much is in the gift of universities to make graduates ‘employable’ and how much of this is dependent on economic and social forces.  To reintroduce the musical chairs analogue, all players ‘employability’ will be increased with a big influx of chairs.  The key pedagogical point here is that employability is better served by the inclusion of an understanding of both agency and social structures.

The reading provided above is a critical reading of employability, one that challenges accepted truisms and hierarchies.  If universities are to provide education and support services, such as guidance, that are fit for purpose for the 21^st century then it clearly needs to provide pedagogy and guidance of a critical nature when addressing ‘employability’, to provide opportunities to critically analyse the labour market, to consider how it is structured around class, gender and ethnicity, and how this will influence an individual’s career trajectory.  Such pedagogy is then likely to allow opportunity for students to consider how to navigate such a terrain, to acknowledge that social structures influence yet are not fully deterministic. 

The sharing of such perspectives also brings forward an opportunity for students to not blame themselves when they fail to gain a ‘graduate’ opportunity, that their private trouble is shared with many others as a public issue, whether that is unemployment or underemployment, and thus providing opportunity for solidarity.  Opening up such critical and sociological perspectives across the career development and higher education field is paramount to challenge the modalities of oppression found in the neo-liberal interconnected markets of education and labour. 

Taking this into account I would like to highlight the following free online talk, at 4pm on 23 February, where I will be sharing my experiences of engaging with a critical form of employability within the Sociology curriculum.  This is part of a series set up by Colin Alexander to explore innovations in Employability, a brilliant space to share experiences and best practice.

To continue the dialogue I would also like to invite readers to contribute, attend and/or publicise the following stream I will be co-ordinating for the London Conference in Critical Though. It would be great to interact for further dialogue of a critical nature, to hopefully move toward ‘social justice’.