Higher education in a post-truth era: whose agency is triggered by a focus on employability?

Employability has developed into a key component of the policies of higher education institutions (HEIs) worldwide, whereby students convert into consumers and knowledge morphs into a marketable commodity that supports a supply of qualified graduates to a precarious labour market. In such a market, employability is influenced by post-truth narratives of marketization to sell education. This conceptual paper draws on critical realist theorizing of structure and agency to discuss how commodified programmes of higher education constitute a narrow view of academic knowledge serving mainly corporations and their financial interests. It argues that HEIs could establish programmes of education that foster collective reflexivity to prepare students to make contributions as agents working within collectivities to enhance human emancipation, rather than merely as ‘employable’ individuals serving the needs of the labour market. Such an approach to education could have significant value in enabling HEIs to support more actively the flourishing of society.