Enhancing Graduate Employability
What could be the main gaps that the university can overtake and prepare to reduce for the fresh graduate students to be ready asset to enter confidently the corporate environment?
Presentation Outline
- Definition of a University
- Types of Universities
- Subjects Offered in a University
- Reasons for Attending University
- Types of Employers
- Issues Affecting Employability Rates among Fresh Graduates
- Recommendations
- Conclusion
- Definition of a University (Kevin, Stuart, Dely & Jon, 2011).
- A university is an educational institution.
- It is tasked with providing a wide range of programs, courses, and activities.
- It provides higher education through extensive graduate and professional programs, disciplines, courses, studies, and researches.
- It accumulates resources to facilitate delivery of high quality education, knowledge, and skills.
- It also creates, develops, and promotes additional skills and values among students.
- Types of Universities (Kevin, Stuart, Dely & Jon, 2011).
- There two types of universities:
- Public universities.
- Private universities.
- They both comprise boards tasked with attending to social, educational, and institutional needs and wants.
- They ensure university’s interests, mission, and obligations are fulfilled effectively and efficiently.
- Subjects Offered in a University (Kevin, Stuart, Dely & Jon, 2011).
- University committee boards are tasked with identification, selection, and promotion processes of creating university programs and courses.
- The programs and courses address subjects such as:
- Philosophy
- Mathematics
- Psychology
- Engineering
- History
- Reasons for attending University (Cranmer, 2006).
- For love of the subjects taught at the particular university course.
- In order to gain experience and witness different and diverse ways of life and achieve exposure.
- To gain higher education thus increase and expand individual chances and opportunities to gain a Job vacancy in the corporate environment.
- To gain knowledge and skills facilitating establishment of newly innovated business ideas.
- Types of Employers (Yorke & Knight, 2006).
- Small voluntary agencies
- Medium sized organizations
- Large multinational firms
- Issues affecting Employability Rates among Fresh Graduates (Cranmer, 2006).
- Employers rely on employees with higher education, talent, proficiency, credentials, and experience.
- They also utilize formal and informal methods to assess employability skills and qualifications among fresh graduates during the recruiting process.
- They list various key qualities, characteristics, qualifications, skills, knowledge, and talents valuable among employable fresh graduates. These competencies are divided into two:
- Technical competencies
- Discipline competencies.
- These competencies demonstrate broad range of attributes. They include:
- Capabilities to teamwork
- Skills to communicate clearly
- Leadership qualities
- Ability to think critically
- Skills and abilities to solve problems
- Human resource management.
- Lack of internships and work placements has denied fresh graduates to develop and demonstrate their employability skills in the corporate world
- More so, very few universities emphasize on internships and work placements.
- Recommendations (Yorke & Knight, 2006).
- Universities should establish and implement graduate employability university programs.
- Staffs at the university ought to ensure the graduate employability programs are career based.
- Academic and non-academic staff working at the universities should be supportive towards the idea of graduate employability programs.
- Universities should design programs and courses based on the needs, qualifications, and requirements within the corporate environment.
- Universities and employers should hold discussions to reduce and eliminate negative attitudes affecting freshly released university graduates in the corporate environment.
- Conclusion
- Universities are not playing their roles effectively and efficiently.
- They are releasing fresh graduates to a corporate environment flooded with other unemployed university graduates.
- Fresh graduates’ numbers are overwhelming to available job opportunities in the corporate environment.
- Although employers regard fresh university graduates as persons with knowledge and skills, they also believe they lack corporate environment experience.
- Thus, universities should invest in establishing and implementing employability programs to advance students’ credentials and experience.
- Consequently, fresh graduates will possess skills, knowledge, and experiences required by employers in the corporate environment.
References
Cranmer, S. (2006). Enhancing Graduate Employability: Best Intentions and Mixed Outcomes. Studies in Higher Education, 31(2), 169–184.
Kevin, L., Stuart, H., Dely, E., & Jon, L. (2011). Employers’ Perceptions of the Employability Skills of New Graduates, University of Glasgow SCRE Centre and Edge Foundation.
Yorke, M., & Knight, P. (2006). Embedding Employability into the Curriculum: Learning and Employability Series One. New York: Higher Education Academy