<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p> Trends within Western capitalist societies toward the individualizing of social problems, the responsibilizing of individuals for such problems, the treating of social problems as problems of control, ongoing attempts to shift the burden for safety and security from the state to the market, and changing conceptions of citizenship, have produced a context within which economic insecurity appears as a governable problem for higher education. Canada’s most populous province, Ontario, experienced radical education reforms during the “common sense revolution” of the Progressive Conservative government from 1995 to 2003. The paper examines government documents, committee and task force reports, and legislative debates and hearings pertaining to these restructuring efforts and draws on the work of Michel Foucault and political sociology to explore the ‘security effects’ of higher education and the latter’s conceptual relationship to employability. Higher education policy and restructuring, shaped as it is by human capital theory, takes employability to be an outcome of restructuring. However, as the paper shows, in an attempt to produce ‘security effects’, employability operated as a central and constitutive category of governance around which education policies as regulatory strategies were crafted. In the recent emergence of a ‘next step’ in the production of the security effects of education employability is displaced by innovation.</p></abstract>

Trends within Western capitalist societies toward the individualizing of social problems, the responsibilizing of individuals for such problems, the treating of social problems as problems of control, ongoing attempts to shift the burden for safety and security from the state to the market, and changing conceptions of citizenship, have produced a context within which economic insecurity appears as a governable problem for higher education. Canada’s most populous province, Ontario, experienced radical education reforms during the “common sense revolution” of the Progressive Conservative government from 1995 to 2003. The paper examines government documents, committee and task force reports, and legislative debates and hearings pertaining to these restructuring efforts and draws on the work of Michel Foucault and political sociology to explore the ‘security effects’ of higher education and the latter’s conceptual relationship to employability. Higher education policy and restructuring, shaped as it is by human capital theory, takes employability to be an outcome of restructuring. However, as the paper shows, in an attempt to produce ‘security effects’, employability operated as a central and constitutive category of governance around which education policies as regulatory strategies were crafted. In the recent emergence of a ‘next step’ in the production of the security effects of education employability is displaced by innovation.

Post-Social politics, employability, and the security effects of higher education

University of Ottawa Faculty of Social Science Department of Criminology 120 University St. Ottawa ON K1N 6N5 Canada

Journal of Pedagogy

Trends within Western capitalist societies toward the individualizing of social problems, the responsibilizing of individuals for such problems, the treating...

Post-Social politics, employability, and the security effects of higher education

Published Online: Dec 28, 2012

Page range: 219 - 241

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/v10159-012-0011-y

Keywords
higher education policy, economic security, governance, regulation, public administration, capital, employability, innovation

This content is open access.

Post-Social politics, employability, and the security effects of higher education

Published Online: Dec 28, 2012

Page range: 219 - 241

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/v10159-012-0011-y

Keywordshigher education policy, economic security, governance, regulation, public administration, capital, employability, innovation

This content is open access.

Keywords
higher education policy, economic security, governance, regulation, public administration, capital, employability, innovation