Employability reforms in Tunisian higher education: a path-dependence perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article investigates the impact of inherited cultural memes on employability policies in Tunisia, where the 2006 Bologna-inspired reforms were touted as a remedy for the critical problem of graduate unemployment. Mainstreaming vocational tracks, introducing transversal courses and involving employers in the design of curricula and training of students were promised to enhance graduates’ ‘job-readiness’. Yet a decade on, graduate unemployment has only exacerbated and fuelled a revolution that toppled the Ben Ali autocratic regime in 2011. Using the lens of path dependence theory, the article probes the way cultural vestiges may impinge on the outcome of the reform policy. The findings reported are mainly based on a doctoral dissertation conducted by the author and also on other relevant empirical studies. It concludes that ‘policy legacies’ and inherited ‘perceptual filters’ continued to shape stakeholders’ perceptions of the traditional mission of universities, while ‘nested rules’ diluted the impact of the new measures and impeded the institutionalisation of the new path of reforms.