Soft-skill competencies are essential for successful careers. Yet, research shows that graduates often lack soft skill competencies. Reasons may be there is no set list of soft skills, soft skills are subjective, and they are challenging to teach and assess. Historically, there has been inconsistent funding for soft skill training in the U.S. for…

The steady increase in science-related requirements in operational areas of skilled and managing workforce is influencing worldwide the discourse on shaping professionalization. This article focuses on the compatibility of professional and scientific competence-oriented learning outcomes of qualification programmes within and across the education…

The objectives of this study are to examine whether the current accounting curricula of Jordanian universities fit the Jordanian market demand, in addition to determining the skills and competences that Jordanian businesses require from accounting graduates. To achieve these objectives, an analysis of current accounting curricula of Jordanian…

Examination of the transition of successful students from university into the labour market reveals a significant gap between the competencies acquired during higher education and those needed in the workplace. In this article, the authors discuss a research study undertaken to analyse the employability traits of engineers who had recently…

A companion to "Traditional Trade Apprenticeships: Training Activity, Employer Incentives and International Practice," this report collates qualitative material from in-depth interviews and focus groups with employers, trainers, apprentices and relevant government officials describing what is effective, what is not, and what needs…

The work of crafting sustainable solutions to complex policy problems requires decision makers and implementers to secure buy-in from a diverse set of stakeholders. Those stakeholders operate in policy ecosystems that span public, for-profit, nonprofit, and entrepreneurial sectors. This increasingly complex landscape requires schools of public…

In English for Specific Purposes, one of the challenges is to transform teaching and learning into a process, which focuses on the development of professional skills, enables students to become successful learners of the target language, and makes them more aware of the local and global environments. This paper aims to analyse key challenges that…

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated a shift to new ways of working, prompting companies to reimagine how, where and by whom work gets done (World Economic Forum & Watson, 2020). This shift was already under way with the technological changes of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Employers are looking for workers who are able to learn new…

One debate among business owners and policymakers centres on whether higher education institutions (HEIs) have failed to transform the younger generation by developing their competencies, skills, values and behaviours to enable them to be fit for the world of work. While previous studies have considered the importance of skills development and its…

The purpose of this study is to critically examine the impact of competence based training on employability of technical and vocational college graduates in Ethiopia. Mixed methods of research design, predominantly concurrent nested strategy were employed to conduct the study. The study involved 162 instructors, 123 Level III automotive technology…

Employers report struggles to find work-ready candidates who possess a desired combination of job-specific technical, general math and reading, and social and behavioral skills. Community colleges are ideally situated to address these shortages, delivering a trained local labor force and often collaborating directly with employers and regional…

The market for college students is trending lower and future projections are not encouraging. We must take action to make our programs more competitive. Using in part, the O*NET database, the authors propose a set of processes to assess business students' (and particularly management students') career aspirations and to align them with the defined…

Higher education institutions must take into account the changing nature of the world of work. They must understand the capacities and competencies demanded by graduates of universities because in an unpredictable world, careers will undergo permanent changes and must respond to the changing needs of the labour market. In this article, we present…

Outcome-oriented, competency-based education has recently been discussed intensively in the higher education community. This education model, a product of more than a hundred years of theoretical dialogue and pedagogical implementation at different levels of schooling and training, is now recognized as effective for university education in the age…

The purpose of this study was to identify the competencies that are required for entry-level forestry and fire management technicians. The strategy is a part of a larger goal to develop the STEM identity of Nez Perce students through the integration of relevant competencies in middle and high school curriculums. The DACUM process was used. Through…