Much has been written on this blog about green guidance and careers work and the complexities of developing ethical careers policies. In this blog post, Head of Research & Organisational Development at The Careers Group David Winter proposes Tony Watts’ categorisation of socio-political ideologies as a useful framework for considering the implications of different practitioner (and service) priorities. If you’re interested in exploring this topic further, don’t miss the NICEC online event The environment, ethics and careers, taking place on 14 March 2023 at 17:00 GMT. This post was first published on LinkedIn on 15 February 2023.

I am currently reading the Green section of Kassia St Clair’s fascinating book The Secret Lives of Colour. But the colour green is on my mind for other reasons. At the end of January, I attended the ONS workshop to discuss a proposed definition of ‘green’ jobs that will help them to produce data on the environmental sustainability of the UK economy. Part of my contribution was to encourage them to think about how the information might be used by students in making career choices.

If we can assign a positive or negative environmental impact value to every occupation, then it’s possible to imagine a scenario in which we could calculate the long-term environmental impact of the graduates of any university. Instead of being judged on the extent to which their graduates obtain roles within particular categories defined as ‘graduate level’, universities could be judged on the overall ‘greenness’ of their graduate outcomes — a different set of league tables. While many higher education institutions commit in principle to supporting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, if there were instead market incentives linked to the achievement of environmentally positive graduate outcomes, what impact would that have on the priorities and practices of universities and their careers services?

Recently at the UK’s national professional body for higher education careers services, AGCAS, we have been discussing the campaign by People & Planet to persuade universities not to promote graduate careers in the fossil fuel industries and how that fits with an ethical commitment to professional impartiality. Is impartiality a fundamental, non-negotiable principle or an unaffordable luxury in the face of a looming crisis for the whole planet? What is our role as educators?

Your answer to that question is likely to depend on your belief in the role and purpose of education in society. It’s questions like this that send me back to Tony Watts’ categorisation of socio-political ideologies. Although the ideological categories were formulated in relation to careers guidance, they can just as easily be applied to education as a whole. The framework doesn’t answer the question for us, but at least it helps us to consider it in a more structured way.

To get to the ideologies you have to ask yourself whether you are prioritising the needs of the individual students or the needs of wider society, and the extent to which your role is to promote change or to support the status quo. The resulting ideologies are:

• conservative — you believe that the role of education is to ensure that students are equipped to meet the current needs of society and the economy
• liberal — you believe that the role of education is to equip individuals to pursue their existing aspirations
• progressive — you believe that the role of education is to inspire individuals to raise their aspirations and enable them to overcome barriers
• radical — you believe that the role of education is to inspire individuals to challenge existing priorities and social structures and equip them to bring about the betterment of society

Career development practitioners who were trained in non-directive approaches often adopt a ‘liberal’ ideology. Your role is to facilitate your client’s choices not to influence them. Impartiality sits comfortably within this ideology. If they want to work in fossil fuel industries, you support them in making that choice, irrespective of what you or anyone else thinks about it.

A ‘progressive’ approach might involve trying to influence students to incorporate the evaluating the long-term impact on the planet into their career decision making. After all it will be in their interests in the long run. This means exerting some influence over their choices. It’s not impartial. But how is it different to attempting to raise the aspirations of disadvantaged students to pursue higher status careers? Is targeting services and resources at WP students impartial? Even so, I’m not sure that just depriving students of information about those industries is the best way to influence their choices.

When decarbonisation of the economy is promoted as an urgent need for society by those who have power (whether that’s political power or the power of public opinion), then promoting green careers for graduates could actually be considered a ‘conservative’ ideological approach. In which case, how is it different from an approach which puts tremendous effort in to preventing students ending up in ‘non-graduate level’ careers because the regulator tells us that’s not a valid outcome? Is that impartial?

A ‘radical’ ideology would perhaps encourage engaged graduates to enter these industries and prevailing governance structures in order to transform their priorities or to join lobbying organisations to add their voices to the campaign. This approach is similar to the ideas of critical pedagogy. Recent approaches to socially just careers work have drawn on ideas from critical pedagogy. But how prevalent is that approach within careers and employability education?

So, impartiality might be consistent with a liberal approach to careers and employability education, but can educational institutions and their careers services claim to have consistently pursued that ideology?

David co-leads the Strategic Approaches to Careers and Employability in Higher Education postgraduate module, run by the University of London, where this and other themes are explored further.