Considerations about employability in higher education

Abstract

This paper provides a review of central features on the debates about the relationship between higher education and the labour market with the aim to contextualize the emergence of employability as a concept, practice, and policy in higher education. In this environment, despite its extensive international diffusion, it suffers significant and criticized contradictions regarding its appropriation, due to the presence of multiple interpretations and the lack of interdisciplinary dialogue to approach it. Thus, in this context, employability tends to be presented as an accountability tool for the teaching and learning process, due to conceptually weak bases completely unrelated to educational research, that give way to a problematic configuration. Its conceptualization does not take into account, for example, contributions from career theory, career education, and career orientation for the development of career management (or employability) skills, from a process-oriented perspective.