Higher Education Institutions' dispute with making students employable for their future careers

Description

In this paper we give notice to the controversial debate initiated by the Bologna Process on higher education institutions' responsibility to increase the employability of their graduates.
Against the backdrop of clashing justificatory logics - a public vs. private good dispute - and the absence of a uniform understanding of the thing called "employability" we analyze the plurality of actors' reactions in relation to their various contestation situations. Applying economics of convention, we critically discuss how employability is perceived and constructed by agents of HEIs, and identify variations in how this EU initiative is transformed to the local level by analyzing the dispute, actors' critique and potential consequences for the configuration of higher education systems. Empirically, we provide illustrations from the Austrian higher education landscape and try to show how societal logics play out "on the ground". We conclude with implications for refining the notion of employability.

Period	3 Mar 2014
Event title	Comparative Sociology Workshop
Event type	Unknown