Higher education institutions increasingly recognise the need to develop both disciplinary knowledge and soft skills to foster the employability of their graduates. For students in International Studies programmes, the workplace opportunities to develop soft skills relevant to their intended professions are scarce, costly and unavailable to many.…

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) conducted the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), a multi-domain adult skills assessment with an extensive background questionnaire, in 2012. PIAAC is a global effort to understand how individuals' education, workplace experiences, and other…

The development of generic capabilities or graduate attributes in communication, teamwork, critical analysis of information, problem solving and ethical practice is widely recognised as a desired outcome of higher education. This emphasis on generic capabilities has emerged despite ongoing debates about the concept and development of such…

The Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) is a cyclical, large scale study of adult skills and life experience focusing on education and employment that was developed and organized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In the United States, the study was conducted in 2011-12 with a…

This first "OECD Skills Outlook" presents the initial results of the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), which evaluates the skills of adults in 22 OECD member countries and two partner countries. The PIAAC survey was designed to provide insights into the availability of some key skills and how they are used at work and at home through the…