Anställningsbara humanister : En kvalitativ studie om studenternas syn på anställningsbarhet

Employable humanists. A qualitative study on humanist students' views on employability. The crisis of the humanities is a controversial debate in the media and within academic settings. Because of lack of request for humanists in the labor market, the question of humanistic skills and employability is becoming increasingly important. The concept of employability importance not only echoes within the economic discussions, but also on everyday agenda in the academic world and takes a large part in the communication between the university and the students. It is therefore important to get answers to the question whether there is conformity in the interpretation of this concept between the university and the students. The aim of this desk study is to examine how the concept of employability has its significance in the academic communication and how the responsibility for employability is portrayed. This is done by studying how the concept of employability is formed and how the responsibilities outlined in texts from Career Center at the University of Umeå, and by comparing study results with the students' perceptions of the concept of employability and responsibility. The study has a qualitative disposition and consists of two main methods: qualitative interviews with focus groups to explore students' views, and critical linguistic analysis of texts with a focus on metaphor analysis and syntax analysis which are also supplemented by the multimodal text analysis. Results of this study indicate that the concept of employability takes a central part of the university’s communication. There are many common starting points in the interpretation of the concept and the responsibility between the university and students. Both the Career Center at Umeå University and students believe that actual knowledge, skills, experience as well as network forms the meaning of the concept of employability, and has a big importance in the student’s position on the job market. However, because the students look at the use of the concept of employability in the texts as acceptance to the social ideological perception of the individual as objects, there is some criticism of the use of the term employability in the university’s communications