In the last decade, employment outcomes have become the most salient measure of success for Australian universities’ educational missions. This shift is evident by the emergence, rapid proliferation, and increasing prominence of metrics such as the national Graduate Outcomes Survey (GOS) and global indicators like the QS Employment Outcomes and the Times Higher Education-published Global Employability University Ranking, to list a few. These benchmarks reflect a significant shift in how the higher education sector perceives and articulates its’ value to Australian society.
While enhancing graduates’ employment prospects is undoubtedly a significant contribution of higher education to society, Australian universities should exercise caution in this regard. There are risks associated with overemphasising job-placement, graduate earnings, the ‘graduate premium’, and the notion of ‘career-readiness’ as core tenets and measures of the value of educational pursuit and attainment.
Historically, higher education institutions have served as powerful engines of social mobility, particularly in the wake of the First and Second Industrial Revolutions. As such, enabled by government schemes, universities have long embodied an ambitious ‘equality of opportunity’ ethos through their educational agendas, empowering individual and communities alike by building aspiration, expanding access, and providing opportunities to transcend historically entrenched economic stratification and social hierarchies through knowledge acquisition, skill development, and self-cultivation.
However, the role of higher education extends far beyond mere economic outcomes or career trajectories. In this regard—and in the context of the ongoing Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR)—characterised by rapid technological advancement, profound societal changes and the ongoing transformation of human cognition, a more holistic and non-instrumentalist approach to assessing the value of a university degree becomes a renewed imperative.
The Employability Paradox
In the fiercely competitive pursuit of the highest employability rate, Australian universities have tailored their programs to industry demands, often inviting industry partners to ideate, co-design, co-develop, and co-deliver new market-driven educational offerings. While seemingly pragmatic and outcome-focused, the assumptions underpinning this approach must be tested and scrutinised in an era characterised by technological disruption, economic volatility, political polarisation, and the sweeping imperative for green transition across industries, sectors, and job categories.
It is at this juncture that the core of the employability paradox emerges: what does it mean for university curricula to be ‘market-driven’ or ‘industry-focused’ when industries themselves are grappling with unprecedented uncertainty in the face of seismic economic shifts and market upheaval? Or, importantly, when their aims are in juxtaposition to the core mission of universities and the communities they serve?
Even if universities could produce graduates with the exact skillsets required by industry today, there is no guarantee that these jobs will not be offshored. Automation in the 4IR has accelerated the mobility of work, allowing companies to shift operations globally with unprecedented ease.
The scale of the impending disruption is staggering. In 2024, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), predicted that almost 40% of global employment is exposed to Artificial Intelligence (AI). In industrialised economies like Australia, the impact is expected to be even more pronounced due to the prevalence of knowledge-based labour and cognitive-oriented tasks, with an estimated 60% of jobs deemed vulnerable to AI disruption. Looking ahead, McKinsey predicts GenAI could rapidly become ubiquitous in Australia, with the potential to automate 62% of tasks today and a staggering 79% by 2030, assuming full realisation of its potential.
This rapid transformation of skills demand in Australia presents unprecedented challenges to industry—challenges which they openly acknowledge. PwC’s 2024 AI Jobs Barometer reports that 69% of CEOs anticipate that GenAI will require most of their workforce to develop new skills, underscoring a dramatic shift where many of the fastest-growing jobs were scarcely imaginable just a decade ago. This acknowledgment from industry leaders highlights the paradox facing Australian universities: the constant pressure to align and re-align their curricula and operations with industry needs and gaps that are, paradoxically themselves, in perpetual flux.
We argue this synchronic approach—attempting to match educational offerings with what industry deems valuable and relevant at any given moment—reveals the inherent tension and contradiction between higher education’s intensified pursuit of employment outcomes and the evolving demands of an increasingly unpredictable and volatile job market.
The Risks of the Employability Paradox
The intense focus on immediate employability metrics carries significant risk for the sector as a whole, as well for each of its universities. By prioritising synchronic alignment with current industry trends, universities may inadvertently:
- Adopt a short-term perspective in curriculum design, potentially neglecting the development and reinforcement of enduring, transferable knowledge and skills.
- Risk producing graduates who are well-suited for the immediate job market, but lack the adaptability and systemic thinking skills to navigate the inevitable challenges of the world of tomorrow.
- Overshadow the vital components of a well-rounded education: critical thinking, ethical reasoning, civic engagement, and the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.
- Diminish the role of universities as catalysts for the co-creation of positive societal change, equality, innovation, and democracy, with the communities they serve.
The Way Forward
To escape the employability paradox, universities must reassert their fundamental purpose as bastions of higher learning. Their mission transcends mere job preparation; it encompasses teaching how to think systematically and critically; how to learn beyond the boundaries of established knowledge; and how to acquire, interrogate, and synthesise new information and knowledge into groundbreaking, impactful ideas, processes and practices.
Consider this analogy: would we hold a high school mathematics teacher be answerable for the students’ immediate employment outcomes and/or university performance years later? It would be unreasonable to place the value of a comprehensive high school education on such an outcome. Yet we increasingly hold universities—and their educators—accountable for the employment outcomes of their graduates in an ever-shifting, turbulent job market.
At its core, education is about the dynamic interplay of practice and knowledge. It fosters critical thinking, self-cultivation, and the capacity to think beyond prevailing paradigms. These meta-skills are the prerequisite for addressing the complex, multifaceted global challenges we face as technology and scientific know-how propels humanity forward into a new horizon.
We should recall the wisdom of ancient philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, who remind us that the value of education (mathematics, physics, politics, philosophy, medicine) extends far beyond producing productive workers and economic utility. In the Platonic view, education is inextricably linked to the higher Forms like equality, justice, and social harmony. This broadened epistemological endeavour is the bedrock of a well-functioning, thriving society.
The challenge is to equip students with the intellectual tools to shape the future of society and work. Only by recommitting to this broader mission can universities truly serve their students, communities, and the common good.
Dr Alejandra Gaitan Barrera is a senior strategy advisor, currently Senior Strategy & Transformation Manager at Macquarie University.
Dr Govand Khalid Azeez is a political economist and philosopher, currently a Lecturer in the Macquarie School of Social Sciences. *
*The opinions presented in this piece are solely those of the authors and do not represent the stance of the university or any institution with which they are associated.
