Can we speak candidly, of a moment particularly triggering to those of you leading employability services? It is, of course, that in which a commitment to “work experience for every student” began to surface across university education strategies.
It was, of course, a commitment as well intentioned as it was practically misguided. Across the sector it was quietly jettisoned or watered down. But not before it manifested all manner of distorted chimeras and mutated definitions of “placement experience”, as staff panicked by an impossible KPI responded in desperate performative ways. You got a part time job in Asda? Yep, retail logistics. Visited the bank? Yup, definitely financial management experience. Bought a Starbucks? Procurement it is.
The challenge here was with both supply and demand. Genuinely enhancing placement-like experiences don’t exist at volume. But the capability and desire of students to take up opportunities also has limits.
It’s easy to get fixated on these practical challenges. I think we should be asking deeper and more existential questions. The sandwich year is positioned as our gold standard; the sector’s point of reference against which scalability in experience-led learning is imagined. But, as I’ve rehearsed in an earlier Wonkhe article, I think there are risks in outsourcing student development to spaces that aren’t overtly educative. Moreover, I think the whole endeavour of situating experiential learning as a function of employability misses a beat in capturing the full range of its potential impacts.
