The political economy of employability: Institutional change in British and German higher education

The article explains the different development of the employability andskills agenda in the British and German higher education systems from the late 1990sand throughout the 2000s. It shows that in the UK universities across the entire sectorembraced the employability and skills agenda, while research universities in Germanyfirmly opposed it and argued that the employability and skills agenda should beexclusive concern of universities of applied sciences. Drawing on concepts from thehigher education and comparative political economy literatures, such as differentiationand coordination, the article develops the argument that these distinct trajectories canbe explained by the different incentive-sets faced by universities in their respectiveinstitutional settings. By highlighting the different behaviour that universities adoptdepending on the higher education system within which they are embedded, thearticle advances broader theoretical points that are relevant for the higher educationliterature as well as the literature on the political economy of skill formation.