This chapter has two main aims. First, it will argue that the conventional explanation of the relationships between education and employment is dangerously oversimplified and needs to be replaced by a model of increasing polarization in Western societies. The British government's strategy of driving the market principle into every area of policy is evaluated with relation to education and training. Second, because this theme is currently discussed in a language that has been imported from management training manuals, from the market and from industry, the social significance of this new vocabulary will be explored briefly before the main argument is discussed.

Industrialization of the Language of Education

Students have become “customers” or “consumers” as well as “inputs and outputs,” heads of departments in universities are openly described as “line managers,” and many vice-chancellors now prefer to be called “chief executives.” The length of a degree course has become “the product's life cycle,” lecturers no longer teach but “deliver the curriculum,” and aims and objectives have been replaced by “inputs” and “outputs” and by ubiquitous, vacuous, and interchangeable “mission statements.” Financial cutbacks are now presented as “efficiency gains,” short and cheap courses are claimed to be “cost effective,” and staff are no longer made redundant – institutions “restructure,” “downsize,” or “rightsize.”