Hugh Lauder

This special issue of the journal is devoted to the contribution of higher education, further education and lifelong learning to the future economy. To consider this question at the time of a pande...

(2019). The case against education: why the education system is a waste of time and money. British Journal of Sociology of Education: Vol. 40, No. 3, pp. 430-440.

This paper undertakes a critical theoretical and empirical analysis of the traditional approach to analysing the education–economy relationship: skill bias technological change theory. It argues that while leading skill bias theorists have sought to address some of the anomalies that the theory confronts, there remain key data patterns that the theory cannot address. We suggest an alternative account that takes a broader political economy perspective.

Over the past half century a range of theories has been developed to understand the nature of skill, its development and relationship to the economy. These theories have often been competing, with fundamentally different assumptions about the production of skills and their relationship to society. However, recent changes in the nature of economic globalization have raised questions about these theories and their applicability to the present context. In this paper we critically evaluate the dominant skill formation theories and outline an alternative approach that takes into account fundamental changes in the global labour market.

This chapter argues that human capital theory cannot provide the policy guidance required to address the problems of graduate underemployment and the dispersion of graduate incomes. These problems should not be seen as arising from the Great Recession and hence, as human capital theory would predict, are temporary. Rather, they have been caused by structural changes to the global labour market. The chapter argues that globalization has led to a ‘global auction for jobs’, not only in low-skill employment but also in high-skill employment, which is beginning to ‘squeeze’ (graduate) job opportunities and incomes, particularly in Western economies. This is combined with a restratification of knowledge-based (graduate) work, which is generating wider income dispersions between new (chosen) elites and other graduates (many of whom are employed in ‘non-graduate’ work). In this regard, the challenge is to move away from a traditional (neoclassical) human capital approach and for industrial policy to help facilitate a greater supply of graduate-type jobs.

The 2008 financial crisis wiped trillions of dollars off the value of the world’s financial markets, but it did little to halt the explosion in college education. Families from all walks of life and governments of all political persuasions embrace the idea that investing in a college education offers students a route to middle-class prosperity. Difficult economic times in much of the world only reinforce the myth that education triggers economic growth and resolves problems of inequality.

(2012). Introduction. Journal of Education and Work: Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 355-356.

(2011). Education, economic globalisation and national qualifications frameworks. Journal of Education and Work: Vol. 24, No. 3-4, pp. 213-221.