Abstract
Graduate outcomes are becoming increasingly prominent within higher education (HE) policy, driven by national governments keen to demonstrate ‘value for money’. The majority of HE policy in this area uses narrow economic metrics, such as employment status and salary, often derived from national surveys of graduates. This paper uses critical realist philosophy to develop a set of foundational concepts (graduate functionings, graduate capabilities and graduate outcomes) that illuminate the key characteristics and mistakes of this HE policy. It is shown that the narrow economic metrics used in policy are graduate functionings not graduate outcomes—they describe how graduates function in the world, rather than how HE influences these functionings. Using graduate functionings to assess the quality and value of HE is an ontological mistake. This judges HE institutions by what graduates do, which may or may not be influenced by HE, rather than considering what HE institutions actually contribute and change. This means that HE policy risks producing inaccurate and misleading conclusions. The paper concludes by recommending how policy could adopt these foundational concepts to better assess the quality and value of HE, offering more appropriate accounts of how HE impacts graduates.
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Notes
This paper uses the term ‘philosophical constructivism’ to refer to a philosophical theory that holds an irrealist ontology. Specifically, one that denies causes exist. Although, ‘constructivism’ is often used in social science to refer to any research that recognises knowledge is theory dependent, this idea is compatible with both critical realism and philosophical constructivism.
Critical realist philosophy is compatible with many different social science theories. Although some social science theories may be excluded as ontologically problematic, for example those that do not allow for individual agency, critical realism does not help to select from the range of compatible theories. This would be the role of social science, not philosophy.
Critical realism actually argues there are three domains of reality: empirical, actual and real (Bhaskar 2008). The empirical contains events experienced by agents, whereas the actual contains all events whether experienced or unexperienced. This distinction is less relevant to the purposes of this paper.
There is a similarity between an ‘educational graduate outcome’ and a ‘learning outcome’, which is used in some parts of the literature (Coates and Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia 2019). However, there is some ontological ambiguity in the latter term. A learning outcome can be used to describe a graduate functioning, e.g. what graduates know. Equally, it could refer to an educational graduate outcome, e.g. assessing the impact of HE teaching on a particular graduate capability.
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Fryer, T. Conceptualising Graduate Outcomes with Critical Realism. High Educ Policy 35, 772–787 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-021-00232-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-021-00232-2