Implementing the Employability Agenda: A Critical Review of Curriculum Developments in Political Science and International Relations in English Universities
| Published date | 01 February 2016 |
| Author | Donna Lee,Holly Snaith,Emma Foster |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9256.12061 |
| Date | 01 February 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Learning and Teaching in Politics and International Studies |
Politics
2016, Vol. 36(1) 95 –111
© The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1111/1467-9256.12061
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Learning and Teaching in Politics and
International Studies
Implementing the Employability Agenda: A
Critical Review of Curriculum Developments
in Political Science and International
Relations in English Universities
Donna Lee
University of Kent
Emma Foster
University of Birmingham
Holly Snaith
University of Copenhagen
This article draws on research commissioned by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and conducted during
2013. It interrogates the ways in which the employability agenda has been fed through to the level of individual
politics departments. The project was particularly concerned with establishing whether, and how,colleagues in
politics and international relations (IR) had taken ownership of student employability at the level of the
curriculum. In the article, the key findings of the research are summarised. There is also discussion of the
(sometimes troubling) professional implications of infusing concern for graduate outcomes within a pedagogic
framework that emphasises critical engagement with the underpinning political structures of the labour
market.
Keywords: employability; curricular issues; pedagogy; political studies; international relations
Introduction
With some of the lowest levels of graduate employability across university campuses, and the
non-vocational nature of most Politics/International Relations (IR) undergraduate pro-
grammes, the discipline faces a huge challenge in responding to the increasingly prevalent
employability agenda in higher education. Indeed, as Politics/IR students feel the burden of
the £9,000 annual student fee now charged by most universities in England,1and an ever-
more contracting (see Table 1) and competitive graduate jobs market, unpicking the existing
employability training and learning in the Politics/IR curriculum in universities has never
been so essential. This article builds on research conducted for the Higher Education Academy
(HEA), exploring the employability learning provision in a cross-section of English higher
education institutions (HEIs) with a view to identifying examples of good practice in order to
POLITICS: 2014 VOL ••(••), ••–••
doi: 10.1111/1467-9256.12061
© 2014 The Authors. Politics © 2014 Political Studies Association
Learning and Teaching in Politics
and International Studies
Implementing the Employability
Agenda: A Critical Review of
Curriculum Developments
in Political Science and International
Relations in English Universities
96 Politics 36(1)
generate reflection on how best the discipline can respond to the employability agenda. The
original project (Lee, Foster and Snaith, 2014) maps how employability is ingrained in various
Politics/IR departments’ curricula;2here we focus on the implications for disciplinary politics
and for teaching practice, to provide an insight into the scale of the practical and pedagogic
challenges we face as a discipline. While our focus here is on Political Science/IR, many of the
challenges we highlight are not specific problems for the discipline and will be shared by
other, apparently non-vocational, disciplines.
The employability agenda in higher education
Employability is a familiar discourse in higher education, which owes much to earlier terms
such as ‘core skills’, ‘key skills’, ‘transferable skills’ and ‘generic skills’ (for a critical review of
the concept of employability, see Arora, 2013; Ashe, 2012). Employability skills are concep-
tualised as a set of largely practical and behavioural graduate attributes, with academics under
compulsion to find ways of embedding skills learning and careers-orientated teaching into the
curriculum: by using work experience and placement schemes, developing teaching methods
to build team-working skills, creating more diverse assessment regimes to develop broader
communication skills, and using methods to advance situated and reflective learning
(Anderson and Mitchell, 2006; Hager and Holland, 2006; Harvey and Knight, 2003; Knight
and Yorke, 2004; Knight and Yorke, 2003; Macfarlane-Dick and Archie, 2006). The genesis of
the skills agenda can be traced to the 1997 Dearing Report (National Committee of Enquiry
Into Higher Education, 1997), which led to the introduction of codes of practice in curriculum
development and required programme specifications to identify specific learning outcomes in
the ‘core skills’ of communication, numeracy, information technology and reflective learning.
The 2006 Leitch Review of Skills was the first hint of a more focused attention on employ-
ability. Leitch identified the need to develop what he called ‘high skills’ in graduates to ‘enable
businesses to compete in the global economy’ (Leitch, 2006, p. 21; see also Moore, 2010, pp.
48–70). The then government minister, John Denham, welcomed the report’s recommenda-
tions, arguing that UK graduates ‘feel less prepared for their jobs after graduation’ and that
Table 1: Graduate employment and unemployment
rates (%), 2006–2012
Academic year Employed Unemployed
2011/2012 71.0 9.0
2010/2011 74.5 7.6
2009/2010 74.4 7.4
2008/2009 72.4 7.6
2007/2008 74.9 6.5
2006/2007 77.0 4.7
Source: HESA based on DLHE surveys and available from: http://www.hesa
.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1899&Itemid=239
[Accessed 18 March 2013].
2DONNA LEE, EMMA FOSTER AND HOLLY SNAITH
© 2014 The Authors. Politics © 2014 Political Studies Association
POLITICS: 2014 VOL ••(••)
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