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Tuesday 19 July 2011

If these aren't employability skills I'll eat my hat

By pesbo
In a meeting a few months back I recalled a particular section of the University of Leicester's previous Learning and Teaching Strategy (2006-2009). In the section on 'Aims of undergraduate programmes' it said the following:
Each undergraduate degree programme should enable development, in a discipline context, of a range of personal or transferable skills, including:
  • problem solving
  • communication skills (written and oral)
  • basic numeracy
  • team working
  • IT skills
  • information handling skills
  • emerging learning technologies skills
  • lifelong learning skills
  • employability skills
Which is all very well - but what's 'employability skills' doing at the bottom there? a) as an afterthought and b) as if it doesn't encompass all the items above it in the list? I think things have moved on since then but I think it's an interesting insight into how people sometimes perceive employability - as only to do with CVs and applications and interviews and not with the skills employers are looking for to do the job in the first place, like these.

Any thoughts?

1 comment:

  1. good point. True. Something to do with the trouble with LISTS./

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