Authenticity, appropriation, or alienation?: how criminologists approach employability in their degrees

This article examines how criminology educators in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand understand, incorporate or reject employability skills in their teaching. Drawing on survey data from 176 criminology educators and follow-up interviews with 40 participants, we identify both shared commitments and sharp divergences in views about the role of employability in criminology curricula. Our findings suggest that criminologists’ practices reflect different attempts to appropriate, rather than merely comply with, institutional demands. The ways criminologists articulate and negotiate their teaching responsibilities in relation to employability are shaped by deeper normative and ontological commitments. Employability is not rejected or accepted wholesale, but reworked in ways that reflect educators’ normative commitments, creating space for both critical pedagogy and pragmatic responsiveness.