Recent analyses of education policy discourses in Europe and beyond note the rise of the discourse of "employability" as a new form of regulating the relationship between universities, markets and the state. Education and labour market relationships are also considered to be one of the main aspects of postsocialist transition. This contribution compares the construction of these links in the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1970s and in its successor states today. Drawing on sociology and anthropology of policy and studies of education as a practice of governmentality, it shows how policy discourses from two distinct political and historical contexts nevertheless exhibit continuity in terms of empowering the state via agentification of markets, employers or the working class. Interpreting this continuity in the context of changing political and economic orders, the contribution argues for a more nuanced understanding of "socialism," "postsocialism," or "neoliberalism" in the analysis of education policies.