The language used in education shapes policy, practice, and perceptions. Edge’s series asks, What's in a Word? and scrutinises the impact of the terminology we commonly employ.
Ask any room of staff or students in higher or further education what ‘employability’ means, and you’ll reliably hear the exact two words: ‘skills’ and ‘jobs.’ I have asked this question hundreds of times, at conferences, in institutional workshops, and as part of my PhD research and without fail, those are the initial responses. But here is the thing: we are never going to all agree on a single definition of employability. That is fine. What we can do is develop a shared language, at the course level and, crucially, with individual students. This is where this conversation really matters. When institutions impose graduate attributes frameworks that assume all students need to demonstrate the same capabilities, like we are building robots, the result can often become a tick-box exercise in reality, disconnected from authentic, lived student experiences. These frameworks struggle to scale in meaningful ways. Language needs to feel real, relevant and owned by those who use it.
During my PhD, I asked university leaders, academics, professional services staff, and students what informed their understanding of ‘employability.’ Most cited the media, league tables, or simply ‘common sense.’ Almost none referenced the extensive academic literature that has defined employability in various nuanced ways for nearly two decades. That gap matters. We have a well-established body of research that remains disconnected mainly from practice at scale. What we need now is not more definitions, but better translation. Part of that starts with calling out some unhelpful distortions. League tables are not measures of employability. The Graduate Outcomes survey provides a snapshot of employment, not employability. ‘Employability League Tables’ are particularly misleading; these are essentially popularity rankings, based on which university graduates employers say they like the most. None of this helps us develop a genuine understanding of what supports employability or success in life and learning. The narrow interpretation of employability as ‘skills for jobs’ satisfies governments globally and the media, but it alienates many academics, professional staff, and students, and hasn’t changed in England since the 1960s. It feels externally imposed, tied to reductive metrics, and disconnected from the broader purpose of education. The result is a word that divides as much as it connects.
In truth, when broken down to its core ingredients, employability is not just about getting a job; it is about how individuals apply what they have learned and who they have become, across different contexts and over time. Employability is about what we know, what we can do, and, most importantly, who we are as people. This broader, more holistic view makes space for resilience, self-efficacy, empathy, and agency, not just as tools for employment, but as foundations for retention, attainment and progression, mental health, and wellbeing too (crucially, all of which matter for Condition B3 from the Office for Students). When we value these human capabilities for their intrinsic importance, not just their instrumental value, we create more innovative, more integrated and future-facing approaches to education at all levels.
That is the argument Raphael Hallett and I made in our book chapter, The Language of Employability. We challenged the dominance of ‘skills’ in employability discourse, arguing that such language narrows and limits both understanding and practice. A broader lexicon, grounded in performance, behaviours, and identity, brings employability closer to the spirit of higher education. It allows students to shape their own narrative of readiness and success, rather than conform to one-size-fits-all outputs.
The HEPI article I wrote with Jon Down Beyond Employability explores these themes further. It reflects on what graduate readiness means in a world of parallel careers, continuous job transitions, AI disruption, and complex identities. As the article suggests, readiness is no longer about what students ‘should know’ but about helping them understand who they are and who they want to become. Employability, reframed in this way, becomes a lifelong, lifewide journey that must be scaffolded throughout education, not tacked on at the edges.
This is not just theory. As a governor at both the school and college levels, I have seen signs of how changing our language can unlock new possibilities for how we support learners. When we stop pretending that ‘skills’ alone are the answer and recognise the changing value of knowledge in the age of AI, we focus on the language learners need to relate to, their attitudes, behaviours, and values, empowering them to understand, own, and articulate their wider personal development.
So yes, employability is contested and always will be. But that is not the problem. The problem arises when we settle for shallow consensus, value numbers alone and pretend that rankings or static metrics capture its whole meaning.
To support true student success, we need to move beyond university-level definitions and start building a shared language of employability that is embedded, owned, and lived locally at the course and individual student level. One that makes space for difference, complexity and, above all, possibility.
Since first drafting this article, the government’s new post-16 Skills White Paper has reinforced exactly the points raised here. Instead of simplifying the system, it adds another layer, V Levels, alongside T Levels, HTQs, apprenticeships, LSIPs and the wider Lifelong Learning Entitlement. After six decades of “skills solutions”, we continue to rearrange the labels while leaving the underlying assumptions untouched. The result is greater fragmentation, not coherence; more pathways, but less clarity for learners. If we are serious about outcomes, we must shift from a skills-first model to a learning-first model that develops human capabilities for life, work and society, not just for short-term labour market needs and the whims of the latest government.
Written by
Dr Doug Cole
Next time: Andrew Ettinger asks what it means to be literary today