Advanced education is more than a job

Education has come to be understood solely as an economic good, rather than a tool for social development. Education market determined following an instrumentalist approach that looks at education solely as an economic good and the resources for progress.

This industry-oriented educational approach was initially applied to vocational education and training. During the 1990s, this approach was expanded to higher education as well as neo-liberalism, in which economic growth is considered the only possible way to maintain prosperity grabs.

Industry-oriented education is access to learning, teaching and assessment that caters to the needs of the industry, ignoring the multiple purposes of higher education as a public good and a public responsibility that reflects the needs of society as a whole. It favors standardization than harmonization of the various educational systems.

In this context, higher education is seen as a knowledge industry, higher education institutions as providers and students as consumers of education and human capital for the labor market. This approach reduces the numbers of people and customers.

European Union students, or ESU, thinks it goes against basic social values ​​and norms that are attributed to higher education in order to address as a commodity and students as consumers to buy the service. It is also contrary approaches to the EU member states agreed on its European Higher Education press.

European Area of ​​skills and qualifications, or EASQ, one of the last steps towards the completion of the project of the European single market, as set out in the background document released for public debate.

Recall that the single market is the free trade area that includes more than one nation on the basis of mutual agreement to enable the free movement of capital, labor, goods and services.

Although internationalization can be seen as part of a political strategy that leads to economic development, increase competitiveness and innovation, it is important to point out that internationalization is not a driver of co modification of higher education.

Finally, the prevailing political discourse is misleading if we want to understand the concept of employability and its key differences from employment: "Employability is defined as the process of learning, a graduate of achievement and the potential to gain a job, taking care not to confuse the concept with the actual acquisition deal - although the concept and the environment are very dependent ", as my colleagues and I wrote in a recent article University News.