Introduction

It is clear that, in most of the discussions about graduate employability, this issue is understood in terms of notions of skills and attributes that, it is suggested or assumed, students must acquire or develop during their studies, and must possess in order to enhance their job and career prospects after graduating. This way of understanding what is meant by graduate employability pervades public policy documents, the literature about the policies and practices that higher education institutions (HEIs) are exhorted to adopt and in which many claim to engage, and probably most of the literature presented as research-based. Yet, this way of understanding, paradigm (Kuhn, 1970) or frame of reference (Johnston, 2003) is not the only option available (Holmes, 2013). Moreover, it has itself been shown to be problematic in terms of its theoretical robustness, empirical validity and pragmatic applicability (see e.g. Bridges, 1992; Hinchcliffe, 2002; Holmes, 1995, 2002; Tomlinson, 2017). These issues raise serious questions about its prevalence, pervasiveness and persistence, which this chapter will seek to examine in terms of its origins in possessive individualist assumptions about the nature of human persons and of society (Macpherson, 1962). Coupled with conceptual confusion that tends to arise from the language of skills and attributes, possessive individualist assumptions have created an almost unsurmountable barrier to the sound investigation of issues of graduate employability.

Frames of Reference for Graduate Employability Research

Writing about the ‘shape’ of research on graduate employment two decades ago, Johnston (2003) asserted that in every discipline and every field, research takes a particular shape. This arises from a variety of influences, including disciplinary interests, the personal interests of leading figures in the field, macro societal developments, intellectual developments and research funding arrangements. She continues:

Often the shape is relatively unquestioned, allowing particular modes of analysis and frames of reference to prevail, despite the existence of other options which may have much to contribute to an overall understanding of relevant issues. The field of higher education and graduate employment is no exception. (Johnston, 2003, p. 413)

Although her article is primarily about research on graduate employment, rather than employability, the general point applies equally to the field of graduate employability research, and perhaps more so to the institutional, national and transnational policies and interventions that are purportedly based on and supported by such research.

The particular ‘frame of reference’ that prevails in the graduate employability field is, of course, expressed in terms of skills, competencies, capabilities, attributes and so forth. Indeed, a ‘jargon generator’ may be created in which words such as ‘generic’, ‘personal’, ‘transferable’, ‘core’ and ‘key’ may be combined with words such as ‘skills’, ‘abilities’, ‘competencies’ and ‘attributes’, and with ‘graduate’, ‘employability’, and so on added into the mix, to form various phrases that have been used and are currently in vogue. At present, the terms ‘skills’ and ‘attributes’ appear to dominate and so will be used in this chapter.

This frame of reference may be characterised as a ‘possessive’ approach based on the assumption that individual persons may ‘acquire’ and ‘have’ (‘possess’) the purported skills and attributes (Holmes, 2013); this assumption then leads to particular research questions. Such questions include:

  • What skills and attributes do employers of graduates require they have and demonstrate?

  • What skills and attributes must students acquire and possess in order to enhance their prospects of gaining suitable/desirable employment after graduating?

  • What skills and attributes do graduates actually have and use in their employment?

Although numerically outweighed by the volume of publications that treat the notion of graduate skills and attributes as unproblematic, there have been alternative and critical voices. The possessive frame of reference, or perspective, is indeed, in Johnston’s words, ‘relatively unquestioned despite the existence of other options’. These other options include what may be termed a ‘positional’ perspective and a ‘processual’ perspective (Holmes, 2013). Yet, policies and practices at macro-, meso- and micro-levels (Holmes, 2013; Holmes & Coughlan, 2008; Tomlinson, 2017) are almost always unquestioningly based on the assumptions of the dominant possessive perspective.

Other options are generally ignored in the publications based on this possessive frame of reference, so their potential contribution to the understanding of the issues at stake is not explored. In particular, we should note, such publications do not attempt to critique alternative perspectives in order to provide rational argument in support of the possessive frame of reference. Moreover, the claims of the possessive frame of reference, with its focus on notions of skills and attributes, have certainly been subjected to critical scrutiny by many scholars in the field, as we shall discuss below. Yet, publications based within it fail to respond to such criticisms; typically, they fail even to acknowledge them. That this is the case in the context of higher education itself requires examination and explanation, given that its purported values include critical enquiry and consideration of opposing claims to understanding and explanation in particular arenas of study.

As indicated above, this chapter will seek to explain the origin of the skills and attributes approach in the field of graduate employability, and its persistence despite its problems, in terms of the concept of possessive individualism. This term was originally coined by political philosopher C. B. Macpherson (1962, 1973) to express the assumptions at the heart of liberal-democratic political theory as it developed in seventeenth-century England, then continuing as merchant capitalism changed into industrial capitalism and society changed from the latter stages of feudalism into a market society. Later writers have taken up this notion in relation to the development of managerial capitalism and neoliberalism (Bromley, 2019), and in relation to psychology (Sampson, 1988, 1993; Shotter, 1993) and the dominant assumption about the nature of human persons. These dominant possessive individualist assumptions, about the nature of persons and the nature of society, are so embedded in contemporary modes of thought that they appear to be ‘natural’ and are not questioned.

The skills and attributes perspective will be examined under these notions to show that they accord with the possessive individualist assumptions. We shall first discuss problems with the perspective to show that it lacks rational support: conceptually, theoretically, empirically and pragmatically (i.e. its potential contribution to an agenda for action). Its continued dominance will then be considered in terms of the role of governmental policy and funding regimes for research and for educational interventions, pedagogic and others. These themselves, it will be argued, are based within and informed by the neoliberal agenda that has driven Western political economy over the past four decades. The origins, however, according to Macpherson, lie much earlier, in the development of liberal-democratic thought in the seventeenth century and the possessive nature of the individual human person conceived of in such thought. We shall argue that in this notion of possessive-individualism, we may find an explanation for the continued and persisting dominance of the skills and attributes perspective on graduate employability.

Problems with the Skills and Attributes Perspective

The problems with the skills and attributes approach are manifold and have been addressed many times (Barnett, 1994; Bridges, 1992; Green, 1994; Griffin, 1994; Gubbay, 1994; Holmes, 2000, 2001; Mason et al., 2006; Matherly & Tillman, 2015). Even the most cursory examination of the employability documentation reveals a wide range of different terms used and the nomenclature adopted. Not only are different terms used (skills, competencies, attributes, etc.), as indicated above, but even if these were taken as synonyms, the items that are included vary. Without a clear, consistent set of terms for the phenomena under investigation (if, indeed, they exist at all), how is it possible to even begin to undertake sound research on or about them? Consistency of terms is a prerequisite for the development and deployment of the key concepts that may be used to understand and explain empirical observations, and that may be related to each other in some form of theoretical framework. The field appears to be in a similar state to that of the protoscience of chemistry before Lavoisier’s work seeking to develop a systematic approach to the naming of substances (1790/2009).

Of course, empirical research, of a kind, is undertaken, most usually in the form of surveys. These typically present a list of the purported skills and attributes to members of a target audience (‘stakeholders’, such as students, graduates, employers, university staff), who are then asked to rate them using a Likert or semantic differential scale, for example, on their importance, whether gained during course undertaken, whether used in employment and so forth. However, the provenance of such lists is highly problematic. Some surveys adopt and/or adapt previous lists, which themselves have dubious provenance. Others seem to have been created through some form of group ‘brainstorming’ activity, almost a ‘garbage can’ framework of terms supposedly expressing what the group members wish to be included. There is no standardised, validated source nor standardised and validated methodology for deriving the survey items. Of course, proponents of skills and attributes may reply that, although using different words, there are certain phrases that have the same or ‘similar-enough’ meaning. This is never demonstrated and in fact has been shown to be problematic (see e.g. Hirsh & Bevan, 1988; Holmes, 2013; Otter, 1997).

Nor do the research projects succeed in locating which skills or attributes are important; they merely elicit the opinions of the members of the target audience. Although it may be useful and important to seek such opinions, there is little reason to believe that they have a better insight to the nature of the phenomena under investigation. They may use the same or similar words and phrases, as part of their mundane, everyday untechnical language (Ryle, 1954), but these should not be confused with the technical concepts used in a field of rational enquiry such as the serious investigation of the relationship between higher education and postgraduation employment.

Perhaps most damaging to the skills and attributes perspective as an agenda for action, that is, HEIs making major changes to their pedagogic practices, is that it cannot explain empirical findings on graduate labour market outcomes, which continue to be differentiated particularly by class, ethnicity and gender (Connor et al., 2005; Furlong & Cartmel, 2005; Mason et al., 2006; Moreau & Leathwood, 2006; Performance Innovation Unit, 2006; Pollard et al., 2004; Purcell & Elias, 2004; Purcell et al., 1999; Smetherham, 2006). The skills and attributes perspective may be seen as serving to obscure and discount the continued importance of these factors.

Such problems have not prevented the development of a raft of curricular and extracurricular interventions intended to enhance the likelihood of students gaining what is seen as desirable employment after graduation. These are usually expressed in terms of their anticipated success in ‘developing’ students’ skills and attributes. These range from module-/course-level initiatives to programme-wide or even HEI-wide interventions. Often, these form the basis of articles published in peer-reviewed journals, but generally only those that have low standing in the various journal-ranking systems. Usually based on a single case study, relating to a very small and particular set of students, within a limited time period, each article is disconnected from the wider context, making any cross-comparison virtually impossible. Any purported success of such initiatives lacks any theoretical explanation that affords general application to other contexts. Paradoxically, there may be many initiatives that might afford such general application if they were framed differently, in a more sophisticated theoretic approach.

Here, we may note that in her review of the ‘shape’ of research on graduate employment, Johnston refers to the ‘skills agenda’ only at the very end. In fact, the heading of a single, short paragraph is ‘the entire skills agenda’, scathingly calling it “a prime example of an area lacking in serious empirical research, on which vast swathes of institutional and national policies are based” (Johnston, 2003, p. 424). It is, she states, ‘undertheorised’ and should be investigated at a much more sophisticated level than it has been. Alas, there is little evidence that there has been any serious attempt to do that. None of this is new, as the citations above indicated. The question then arises as to why this might be so.

Policy Origins of the Skills and Attributes Perspective

Johnston gives a number of factors that give the ‘shape’ of research within any field, which we may consider here in relation to the dominance of the possessive perspective or frame of reference in the particular field of graduate employability. Research funding relating to graduate employability has overwhelmingly been linked to policy-led interventions, especially pedagogic initiatives. Access to such funding is dependent upon framing applications in terms set by the funder, and the outcomes of the ‘research’ subject to evaluation in relation to the stated aims in the approved applications. Indeed, we might view much of the findings of such ‘research’ as examples of what Boden and Epstein (2006) term ‘policy-based evidence making’. ‘Successful’ projects, as perceived by the funding bodies, will tend to place the principal investigators and co-investigators in a better place for further funding than those who have had limited engagement with the research area, within the frames of reference accepted by the funders.

Of course, those who gain significant funding will have the resources to undertake relatively larger projects, and so be able to publish more, thus becoming the ‘leading figures in the field’, whose personal interests will further influence the ‘shape’ of research (Johnston, 2003). Other researchers then tend to cite and to work within the dominant frame of reference, thus reinforcing its position (Latour, 1987). This may be seen in the case of the graduate employability field, where the skills and attributes approach is dominant. Although Johnston doesn’t use the term ‘paradigm’ (Kuhn, 1970), work within the skills and attributes perspective does appear to have the features of ‘normal science’, where investigators work within a settled, taken-for-granted frame of reference, accumulating findings but not challenging underlying assumptions. Thus, in addition to the kind of publications discussed above, based mostly on single case studies of curricular initiatives, we find many publications based on empirical investigations into the skills and attributes (purportedly) needed, possessed and/or used by graduates from particular universities (or courses within them), in various geographical locations (regions, countries), industries and so on. These generally provide no rationale for the selection of the respondents for their investigation, thus adding little or no significant empirical findings. In Lakatos’ terms, they may be regarded as examples of work within a ‘degenerative research programme’ (Lakatos, 1970).

The rise and growth of the field of graduate employability, as an arena of research, policy and practice, has been rehearsed in many publications (eg Barnett, 1994; Drew, 1998; Rothwell & Rothwell, 2017; Symes & McIntyre, 2000; Tomlinson, 2017). The term ‘graduate employability’ only became the main term, particularly in the context of the UK and Australia (in which much of the early literature was based), from the late 1990s, displacing somewhat the terms used earlier, such as ‘key skills’, ‘transferable skills’ and so on.

We should, however, note that the growing emphasis on employability was not restricted to graduates, having been a key issue in relation to the perceived need to reform schooling to address the needs of the economy and society. These were expressed in terms of notions of competence or competency (Barnett, 1994; Bates, 1995; Grant et al., 1979) and also in respect to what may be termed the ‘learning turn’ (Holmes, 2004), or the ‘learnification’ of education (Biesta, 2005), as reflected in the ideas of ‘lifelong learners’, ‘lifelong learning’ and the ‘learning society’ (Coffield, 2000; Field, 2000).

National governments have clearly played a significant role in the rise of this discourse of ‘learning-and-competence’. This may be seen in the case of the UK from the early 1980s, with the reform of vocational qualifications and the ‘vocationalising’ of schooling (Burke, 1989, 1995; Jessup, 1991), through various government policy documents (Department for Education and Employment, 1988, 1999), and so too in Australia (Australian Education Council. Mayer Committee, 1992; Curtis & McKenzie, 2001; West & Commonwealth of Australia: Department of Employment Education Training and Youth Affairs, 1998).

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has also particularly been influential (Gonczi, 2006; Mausethagen, 2013). The DeSeCo (Defining and selecting competencies) project was established by the OECD in 1997, ostensibly to construct an “overarching conceptual frame of reference for the development of key competences and their assessment in an international setting” (Rychen, 2004, p. 317). In effect, this was intended to provide a system of inter-country comparison similar to PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) but extending into a ‘lifelong learning’ perspective, the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC).

The rationale put forward for such developments is usually twofold: the needs of the economy and society, and the benefits to individuals. On the one hand, each country must invest in education to ensure it has a workforce that can compete in an increasingly globalised competitive economy, take advantage of new technologies, address changing environmental challenges and so on. On the other, individuals will benefit by ‘investing’ in themselves, as workers and as citizens, by engaging in lifelong learning to develop their skills and attributes (see e.g. Tomlinson & Holmes, 2017). In both cases, there will be some investment in anticipation of gaining reward. By developing a system of calculability, that is, based on assessable outcomes (the skills and attributes developed and acquired), such investment may be more efficiently directed. This political-economic vision is, of course, based on certain assumptions about the nature of individual persons and of society, particularly in terms of notions of ‘human capital’ and within neoclassical economic theory that has dominated since the last two decades of the last century. Its origins, however, go back further, in the rise of post-Renaissance political thought accompanying the growth of early capitalism. This may be seen by considering the concept of possessive individualism, developed by C. B. Macpherson.

The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism

Macpherson was a political-economy theorist who sought to rework liberal-democratic theory in the light of Marx’s critique. His major opus was his book, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (1962), in which he argued that the problems of modern liberal-democratic theory lay in a ‘central difficulty’ contained within the originating seventeenth-century individualism. That difficulty was its possessive quality. This powerfully shaped the key concepts of freedom, rights, obligation and justice central to the development of that theory:

Its possessive quality is found in its conception of the individual as essentially the owner of his own person or capacities, owing nothing to society for them. (Macpherson, 1962, p. 3)

Macpherson develops his thesis through examining how political theory developed during the seventeenth century, through Levellers and Harrington to Locke. He examines how these approached the issue of obligation in society, the conditions under which market relations can be sustained. The struggles for most of the century between the rights of parliament versus those of the self-sustaining monarchy concluded in the supremacy of parliament, the members of which were subject to periodic election. English political theory provided a rationale for a ‘possessive-market’ society in which all could exercise their individual freedom under the guarantee of property rights by government. Those property rights included the individual’s own person and capacities. The marketplace, in which everything is tradeable, including a person’s labour, was the mechanism by which freedom could be exercised without infringing on, or being infringed on by, others. In this way, any differences in wealth and power in society arose solely from individuals freely entering into contracts, one party paying wages for another’s labour, the other accepting wages in exchange for their labour.

In such a possessive market society, those who have no land or capital of their own are compelled, in order to survive, to sell their labour power to those who do, accepting a wage that permits part of the product of their labour to those who own land and capital. The contractual relationship was not truly free as the options open to the wage-labourer, lacking land of other resources to sustain life, were only to work for this or another employer—or starve. The ideas underpinning the possessive market society thus gave rise to industrial capitalism, as those who had wealth were able to use the labour of others to increase that wealth. Benthamite utilitarianism provided justification, based on the notions that each individual person seeks to maximise the satisfactions (‘utilities’) they gained and consumed from free market exchange with others.

To treat the maximization of utilities as the ultimate justification of society, is to view man [sic] as essentially a consumer of utilities. (Macpherson, 1973, p. 4)

However, such a view of human beings differs from previous humanistic ideas of a person being a “doer, a creator, an enjoyer of [their] attributes”. Macpherson states that such attributes may be taken to include

the capacity for rational understanding, for moral judgement and action, for aesthetic creation or contemplation, for the emotional activities of friendship and love, and, sometimes, for religious experience. (ibid.)

We should note that Macpherson’s use of the term ‘attributes’ is very different from that used within the employability field. These ideas of what it means to be a human being, their ‘essence’, came back into discussions, largely as a reaction against crude Benthamism. However, the possessive individualist assumption was too deeply rooted in market society to be driven out, and so, from Mill onwards, there began an uneasy compromise between the two views, and the subsequent liberal-democratic tradition formed, “an unsure mixture of the two maximizing claims” (op. cit., p.5).

Bromley (2019) takes up Macpherson’s analysis of the possessive individualist assumptions inbuilt to Western liberal-democratic political thought in a devastating critique of contemporary global capitalism. Emeritus professor of economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Bromley has written prolifically on economics and the environment, and especially has critiqued notions of the ‘objective’ nature of efficiency analysis in economics, and of rational choice theory. In his latest book, exploring the current world disorder, he asks

How is it possible that many of the successful democratic market economies—all with very high per capita incomes—are experiencing economic malaise and political revolt? […] if democracy and market economies are mutually supportive and conduce to human well-being, why are most countries in South Asia and Africa so poor and generally dysfunctional? (Bromley, 2019, p. 4)

He locates the cause of the malaise in the underlying modern idea of the sanctity of individual choice, drawing upon Macpherson’s notion of possessive individualism, stating that this “has stymied the full realization of the promise of the Enlightenment” (p. 6).

Specifically, with individuals now liberated to pursue their own self-interest, it seems that they have developed an overarching affinity for doing precisely that, very often showing precious little regard for the interests of others. Should we be surprised? (ibid.)

Possessive individualism, he argues, is “the reigning idea of our time […] the accepted spirit of our age and the cultural legacy of capitalism” (p. 22).

Bromley analyses the problems, the crisis of capitalism, through its historic development from pre-capitalist household provisioning, through mercantile capitalism and then industrial capitalism, on to financial capitalism and then finally in the current century being transformed into managerial capitalism. Under the latter mode, the central imperative is to reduce costs, more specifically labour costs, in order to yield greater returns to the owners of capital, that ownership being effected through various financial instruments to spread risk and maximise investment flexibility. Those without wealth now become “highly dispensable supplier[s] of labour power” (p. 37), with uncertain prospects for continued employment. In this, the discipline of economics has played a key justificatory role and is “misleading in its assumptions, wilful in its presentation, and contrived in its conclusions” (p. x). Bromley argues that some economists, notably Gary Becker and Douglass North, have also sought to bring other social sciences under the choice-theoretic models of economics.

Self-contained Individualism

One social science field in which possessive individualist assumptions may be seen to have taken root, in some quarters, is that of psychology (Dachler & Hosking, 1995; Sampson, 1988, 1993; Shotter, 1990, 1993). These focus on the issue of how we are to understand human persons within psychological studies. Sampson (1988) expresses this as a debate between, on the one hand, ‘self-contained individualism’ and, on the other, what he terms ‘ensembled individualism’. Shortly later (1993), he identifies the former with possessive individualism, drawing upon Macpherson’s work, particularly in terms of his discussion of the seventeenth-century debates about who may vote, and so who is to count as a person.

[…] the possessive individualistic formulation defines the self-contained ideal and simultaneously establishes the negative self-other relationship that is at the root of the self-celebratory world-view. (op. cit., p33)

Dachler and Hosking (1995) use the term ‘entitative perspective’ in a similar way, contrasting this with the ‘relational perspective’.

Sampson (1993) continues that the self-contained ideal is based on the notion that the individual is a ‘kind of container’. This, he goes on to demonstrate, is a particularly Western notion and is not universal. For now, we can consider it in relation to the skills and attributes perspective on graduate employability.

As already noted, the language of skills and attributes is replete with possessive terms: ‘acquire’, ‘have’, ‘possess’, ‘demonstrate’, ‘use’. The term ‘develop’ is also used, often perhaps to try to avoid possessive language. However, this merely serves to obscure as clearly what is being developed is not separate from the individual, but ‘her’/ ‘his’/ ‘their’ skills and attributes. No explanation is given as to where a particular skill may exist, but clearly the assumption is that ‘it’ resides in the person. In this sense, the language perhaps draws upon the recognition that we use bodily parts (e.g. hand, arms, eyes, ears) in our activities, so skills may be analogous to these. We also have brains (in our heads), which are in some way related to the notion that we ‘have’ minds, a notion that Ryle (1949) sought to criticise as a category error. Yet, despite the critique by Ryle, and others, it is a commonplace notion in everyday language—and one that easily slips into a self-as-container, possessive individualist model. On this, it is worth recalling Wittgenstein’s warning:

We talk of processes and states and leave their nature undecided. Sometime perhaps we shall know more about them—we think. But that is just what commits us to a particular way of looking at the matter. (Wittgenstein, 1953, para. 308)

The warning is all part of his general warning us against “the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language” (op. cit., para. 109). Similarly, Andreski (1972) warns that

constant attention to the meaning of terms is indispensable in the study of human affairs, because in this field powerful social forces operate which continuously create verbal confusion. (p. 61)

The dominant ideology of possessive individualism may be seen as a part of those powerful social forces. It leads to the confused assumption that skills and attributes have some empirically real existence in persons, that those persons can acquire and possess them. That confusion is supported and sustained by a lack of conceptual clarification, a prerequisite for sound thinking that has historically been claimed as a distinctive contribution that universities make to civic affairs—see, for example, Stebbing’s recently re-published 1939 classic on ‘thinking to some purpose’ (Stebbing, 2022 [1939]).

Language and the Need for Conceptual Clarification

Linguistic philosophers such as Wittgenstein, Ryle and Austin cautioned us to look carefully at the way that we use language. Rather than assuming that certain words and phrases used in different contexts have the same, or very similar, meanings (they are paronymous), we should recognise that we engage in different kinds of ‘language games’ (Wittgenstein, 1953). Indeed, Wittgenstein says that there are countless different kinds of use of symbols, words, sentences: giving order, describing the appearance of objects, reporting an event, forming an testing a hypothesis, making a joke, asking, thanking, cursing and so on (para. 23). Austin (1962) famously explored ‘different kinds of utterances’, or ‘speech acts’, pointing out that

many specially perplexing words embedded in apparently descriptive statements do not serve to indicate some specially odd additional feature in the reality reported, but to indicate (not to report) the circumstances in which the statement is made or reservations to which it is subject or the way it is to be taken and the like. (p. 3)

He distinguished between the locutionary act (what is actually said), the illocutionary act (the act that is performed, e.g., asking a question, giving information, announcing an intention, making a promise) and the perlocutionary act (the consequences that are brought about, intentionally or otherwise).

We may apply this to utterances, speech acts, involving the various words and phrases in the (haphazard) skills and attributes lexicon. What are we doing when we say of someone that they ‘have’ a particular skill or skills, for example, ‘problem-solving skill’, or ‘communication skills’? The language of possessive individualism tends to present this as a descriptive statement, denoting some factual or hypothesised state of affairs. Yet, when we begin to ask what illocutionary act is being performed, we would consider the circumstances in which the utterance is made. An employer engaged in the selection process for a graduate employee might say this as part of the act of making a verdict on their suitability for the job. If this takes place in a panel interview or assessment centre setting, it may also be the act of attempting to persuade other members and/or justify their own recommendation, as may be seen in the studies by Silverman and Jones (1973).

What about in the context of investigations where graduate recruiters are being interviewed in a study of ‘what employers need’? Here, they may be seen as presenting themselves as knowledgeable, experienced, rational, capable, professional recruiters, deploying the shared language of skills and attributes. In fact, in the report of the large study that included interviews with employers (Harvey et al., 1997), there is very little use of the skills and attributes terms that appear in the lists that predominate. As the authors have selected the quotations used in the report, we may assume that there were no other parts of the interview transcriptions that fitted better with those lists.

We may also consider the language of skills and attributes in relation to the reported complaints by employers of a mismatch between what they want or require and what graduates ‘have’. These are usually presented as generalised complaints. That is, they are expressions of general dissatisfaction, not as the outcomes of clear investigations, documenting exactly in what circumstances the ‘problem’ occurs and how it presents itself. If the complaint is that too many graduates that are recruited are found to be underperforming, then we might suggest that their selection processes need to be improved, or other aspects of the human resource management practices need attention, such as employee training and development, mentoring, appraisal and so on. If the complaint is that too many graduates that enter their selection processes are viewed as unsuitable for the posts on offer, we might do well to suggest that those employers should look to their recruitment processes. Higher education institutions are not, after all, surrogate recruitment agencies. At the very least, we might conclude that there needs to be a ‘conversation’ about the mutual expectations between higher education and employers. What we cannot conclude is that employers’ complaints constitute factual descriptions of a particular state of affairs in relation to some purported phenomena denoted by clearly defined terms.

These issues require not more surveys, or complicated ‘garbage can’ models derived from ‘brainstorming’ sessions, but should, rather, be examined through conceptual clarification without which sound ‘thinking to some purpose’ (Stebbing, 2022 [1939]) is impossible. This is no easy task, and requires, as Andreski (1972) reminds us, ‘constant attention’ because of the tendency for confusion arising from ‘powerful social forces’, particularly those arising in the possessive individualist assumptions that pervade neoliberalism.

Conclusion

We have argued that the continued dominance of the skills and attributes perspective in the field of graduate employability, its persistence despite well-documented problems and lack of conceptual, theoretical and empirical support requires explanation. This may be done by utilising Macpherson’s concept of possessive individualism, developed in the political theory that developed alongside and supporting early capitalism and the market society, continuing with the development of liberal democracies into the twentieth century. This now has severe deleterious effects on society worldwide, as shown by Bromley’s analysis. Under possessive individualism, the model of the human person is of a self-as-container, the contents of which include purported skills and attributes which students are told they must acquire or develop, and possess, in order to gain desirable employment. The perspective is now so ingrained in modern society that little serious investigation is undertaken, and where it is, it gains little purchase on the discourse at macro-, meso- and micro-levels.

We should also note that this is happening at a time when the numbers of students attending higher education, and so the number of persons entering the labour market as graduates, have increased enormously—the massification of higher education. In many countries, particularly the UK, the costs of higher education have been shifted to the supposed ‘customer’, on the implicit (sometimes explicit) promise of significant benefit (the graduate premium). Yet, the forces of globalisation and technological changes (reducing the need for labour) are seriously affecting job and career opportunities (Brown & Hesketh, 2004; Matherly & Tillman, 2015; Moreau & Leathwood, 2006; Tomlinson & Holmes, 2017).

On this analysis, the skills and attributes perspective may be seen as a consequence of, and contributor to, the malaise documented by many critics of contemporary capitalism, particularly as explored by Bromley, drawing upon Macpherson’s work. Clearly, any resolution of that malaise lies beyond the scope of this chapter and, more especially, academia itself. However, what it does indicate is that there is an urgent need for higher education to develop (or regain) an alternative vision of what it is, what its purpose is, what its values are, rather than accepting the neoliberal vision (nightmare?) that has taken over under its possessive individualist assumptions. Moreover, the manifest terminological and conceptual confusion of the possessive, skills and attributes approach needs to be subjected to sustained analysis to attempt to engage in clear thinking about graduate employability, just as that applies to any other arena of academic enquiry.