Higher Education and the Labour Market Infrastructure in the Digital Economy

This paper investigates the increasing role of global private actors in governing higher education by focusing on policy around graduate employability and skills. More specifically, we focus on social media platforms as basic infrastructures in the contemporary platform capitalism (Srnicek, 2017). We draw on three related processes: the increasingly complex and trans-national labour market that makes skills matching difficult (Moore and Morton, 2017); the increasing responsibility of higher education institutions for the employability of graduates (Harvey, 2000); and lastly, the rise of the digital economy, in which digital platforms are basic coordination infrastructures (Helmond, 2015). While much is known about policies that motivate higher education institutions (HEIs) to take graduate employability and employers’ (dis)satisfaction with graduate skills seriously, there is far less detail about the actual practices and measures used by HEIs to mediate the transition of students into employment. Moreover, there is a paucity of research into the role and significance of social media and digital platforms in employability practices. This paper addresses this gap and presents some first findings of a research project that has collected data from European HEIs, employers and the Web to allow for unique international and institutional comparisons.