| CODE | LAS2065 | ||||||
| TITLE | Exploring the relationship between Education and Employment | ||||||
| UM LEVEL | H - Higher Level | ||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 6 | ||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 4 | ||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Centre for the Liberal Arts and Sciences | ||||||
| DESCRIPTION | This unit offers an exploration of the increasingly strong relationship between education and employment. Participants are introduced to the claim that contemporary states need to focus on achieving economic growth through improved competitiveness that is to be sustained by the creation of an enterprise culture. Once this claim is considered, participants are introduced to the idea of education conceptualised as investment in human capital. That is, an education system that is principally justified through its contribution to the economy and whose main aim is to produce students with the characteristics which the economy requires. The attention then moves on to the different ways in which schools are made to focus on enhancing pupil’s employability. The strategies considered include an array of standards-based reforms, the increasing importance given to early childhood education, efforts to encourage students to lengthen their stay in the education system and the growing emphasis on STEM and Vocational education. Apart from these policies, the unit also examines in detail the idea that education systems are increasingly focusing on creating the entrepreneurial-self, that is, the individual who sees himself/herself as primarily responsible to create and maintain his/her economic autonomy. Taking into consideration all of the above, participants are then encouraged to problematise the nature of the relationship between the aims of education, the requirements of the economy, the wishes of individuals and the well-being of society at large. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Articulate the economic aims of education; - Critically evaluate the notions of human capital theory, credentialism, social mobility, the education production function, the entrepreneurial self, the knowledge economy, meritocracy, social inequality, social justice, social cohesion and other related ideas; - Identify education policies aimed at enabling education systems to achieve their economic aims; - Describe the contributions that education can make to economic growth and the role of competitiveness; - Discuss the ways in which education can transform students into entrepreneurial-selves; - Examine the consequences of transforming education into mainly a process for enhancing pupils’ employability; - Recognise that different policy choices have different impacts on both individuals and society; - Understand more deeply government actions in relation to education. 2. Skills: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Combine empirical and normative considerations in the assessment of the pressures to increasingly link education to the needs of the economy; - Interrogate the key critiques and defences of linking education to the needs of the economy from diverse standpoints; - Evaluate the efforts made by authorities to make sure that the education reaches increasingly more demanding economic aims; - Characterise the entrepreneurial-self and his/her role in the knowledge economy; - Problematise the nature of the relationship between education and the economy - Identify the different aims of education; - Distinguish between different policy approaches in relation to student employability; - Engage critically with diverse education policies aimed at enabling education to serve the needs of the economy; - Evaluate the moral implications of specific education policies. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Main Texts: - Spring, J. (2015). Economization of education: Human capital, global corporations, skills-based schooling. Routledge. - Krueger, A. B., & Lindahl, M. (2001). Education for growth: Why and for whom? Journal of Economic Literature, 39(4), 1101-1136. https://doi.org/10.1257/jel.39.4.1101. - Wößmann, L. (2002). Schooling and the quality of human capital. Springer. Supplementary Readings: - Berglund, K. (2013). Fighting against All Odds: Entrepreneurship Education as Employability Training. Ephemera, 13 (4), 717-735. - Pissarides, C. (2000). Human Capital and Growth. OECD. - Peters, M. A. (2016). Education, neoliberalism, and Human Capital: Homo Economicus as 'Entrepreneur of Himself'. In S. Springer, K. Birch, and J. MacLeavy (Eds.), The Handbook of Neoliberalism (pp. 297-307). Routledge. - Peters, M. (2001a). Education, Enterprise Culture and the Entrepreneurial Self: A Foucauldian Perspective. Journal of Educational Enquiry, 2(2), 58-71. - Rose, N. (1992). Governing the enterprising self. In P. Heelas & P. Morris (Eds.), The Values of the Enterprise Culture: The Moral Debate (pp. 141-164). Routledge. - Becker, G. S. 2002. The Age of Human Capital. In Lazear, E. (Ed.), Education in the 21st Century. (pp. 3-8). Hoover Institution Press. - Brown, W. (2016). Sacrificial citizenship: Neoliberalism, human capital, and austerity politics. Constellations, 23(1), 3-14. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12166. |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture | ||||||
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2023/4. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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