Generic skills and graduate attributes: abandoning knowledge in higher education?

Increasingly, universities have taken it upon themselves to produce graduates who are broadly prepared for participation in society and a life in the workforce by integrating into their curricula the development of generic qualities such as leadership or problem solving skills. This shift in focus towards an emphasis of graduate attributes is forged in a discourse of liberty and social democracy in which students are positioned as future agents of social good. This rhetoric however, conceals the significant influence Neo-liberal market ideology has had on higher education curricula which, in conjunction with a false but deeply entrenched postmodern epistemic relation to truth and understanding, has lead institutions to divorce knowledge from their curricula and from their students. The result of which, rather than being democratic in any sense, actually works to prevent students from accessing the knowledge necessary for effective participation in their chosen field. This paper draws on principles of Legitimation Code Theory and the writings of Basil Bernstein to bring knowledge back into the focus of higher education for our students.