Revisiting the Skills Agenda : A Complicated Geography

This paper revisits the skills agenda and suggests that in light of shifts from supply-side to demand-led provision within the UK higher education sector, there is a need to think more critically about the role and place of skills within university curricula. It suggests that if universities are to respond effectively to sector changes, then the increasing focus on embedding employability and skill development wihtin curricula needs to be accompanied by consideration of how skills are understood, negotiated and given meaning at the curricula level. Consequently, this paper assesses how 'place' affects our understanding of skills; it moves on to address the relationship between skills and the development of student personality, before concluding with an exploration of the performance of skills, which questions what we actually mean when we talk about skills.