Narrowing participation? Contesting the dominant discourse of employability in contemporary higher education

Abstract

This article considers the various roles the so called ‘employability agenda’ plays in helping to narrow the terms of participation in higher education (HE) around definitions of educational value dominated by neoliberalist notions of ‘human capital’. The article argues that as these definitions become naturalised in the behaviour of learners and their teachers it behoves us (academics, careers educators, learning developers et al.) to draw attention to the conditions of learning and to the broader scheme of values around work and identity, and models of success, which shape them in the 21st Century university.