ABSTRACT
The discussions in the preceding chapters have brought into focus current trends in the spheres of work and education. The sweeping influence of a neoliberal economic world-view and approach to social practices has made a particular set of assumptions about work and education appear commonplace and taken-for-granted in much of society. That normative acceptance, though, does not diminish the seriousness of concerns and dilemmas that have arisen through the course of the neo-liberal knowledge-intensive economy. In the 2010s, the powerful hold of an idealized knowledge-based economy may be showing signs of weakening. The public may be guessing that the promise of good jobs for all is turning out to be false, if indeed it ever were a viable prospect in a radically marketized and intensively competitive economy. Yet there appear few signs of a weakening in adherence to the dominant
policy model and assumed advance of the knowledge-based economy. On the contrary, a strengthening of policy demands in its pursuit and intensified pressures on education, on workers and on social institutions to comply with its demands is apparent. Current policy directives in the European Union, with the launch of Europe 2020, persist in emphasizing an imagined “skills deficit” and urge increased participation of young people in higher education and skills training. Education systems are pressured to further expand and rationalize in correspondence with the overarching policy framework for a knowledge-based economy and assumed labour market demand. That policy pressure in the midst of persistently disparate labour market utility of higherlevel skills and structurally obstructed dispersion of their benefits presents many contradictions and dilemmas. These discrepancies and dilemmas are scarcely acknowledged and, when they are, frequently dismissed as necessarily tolerable irregularities and social inequalities. This chapter examines critical concerns and dilemmas that arise in the
pursuit of the liberalized knowledge-based economy and learning society in regard to work and education. These concerns affect the world of work and education in both similar and particular ways, all of which warrant specific attention. My discussion draws attention to general, overarching concerns that
critically connect education and work. Orienting the discussion is a paramount concern for the dilemmas that arise for working people, for the majority of people who participate in education and training systems and who work in jobs traded in liberalized and dynamic labour markets. Workers, rendered employees in subordinated labour or, more commonly, as “human resources”, are the living, personal subjects of the generalized policy pursuits and business firm demands. They bear, in their everyday working and learning lives, the brunt of the knowledge-based hyper-productivity and competitiveness drives. The dilemmas that arise for institutions arise, more personally, for them.
