A case study of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan - Society for ...

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It has furthermore been reported that the completion of a university qualification is no longer a luxury but a necessity for employers that constantly search for a highly educated workforce in order to be globally competitive (Zinser, 2003). In the 21 st century, the design of university curricula needs to support the development of intellectual and critical thinking skills that enable a graduate to fulfil a role, rather than merely possessing the immediate task-related skills that equip a graduate to perform a specific job (Cox & King, 2006). Various policy commitments such as lifelong learning, widening participation, and graduate employability are challenging universities to reconceptualise the aims of undergraduate higher education towards a more generalised capability and a diminution of emphasis on immediate learning of subject disciplinary material. However, before embarking on any initiatives to embed employability in the university curriculum, it is important to broadly define graduate employability as “the skills, personal attributes and values which should be acquired by all graduates regardless of their discipline or field of study, and representing the centre achievements of higher education as a process” (Higher Education Council, 1992: 20). York and Knight (2004: 2) add that graduate employability is a more complex construct than those of ‘core’ or ‘key’ skills in that it connects with a range of discourses and has many facets which range from understanding of one or more subject disciplines to ‘soft skills’ such as working effectively with others. The implication is that the curriculum and associated pedagogy need to encompass both the subjectspecific and the generic. This is supported by Stewart and Knowles (2000: 2) who are of the opinion that “higher education has a responsibility to its principal stakeholders — students — to equip them with more than a profound knowledge of an academic subject area. Higher education has a responsibility to students that includes encouraging and enabling them to develop, through their academic study, a range of explicit attributes, which allow them to subsequently engage effectively in the world of work”. Purpose The purpose of this paper will be to report on an institutional research study conducted at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) in South Africa to examine the perceptions of graduates and employers with respect to various aspects that impact on graduate employability, including the benefits of experiential learning and the transferable knowledge, skills and attributes required of graduates in the knowledge society. The findings of this research will be presented to address certain key questions. Firstly, what are the expectations of selected employers and graduates of the key knowledge, skills and attributes required to enhance graduate employability? Secondly, what are the perceptions of employers and graduates with respect to the extent to which university qualifications contribute to graduate employability? Thirdly, to what extent does work-based or experiential learning contribute to graduate employability? Methodology The first phase of the study involved administering a structured questionnaire survey among NMMU graduates who graduated between 2005 and 2008, while the second phase comprised semi-
structured, in-depth interviews with selected employers of NMMU graduates. The sampling frame for the quantitative graduate survey was limited to 2005-2008 NMMU graduates and non-probability convenience and snowball sampling methods were applied to obtain a sample of 2841 graduates. The total number of NMMU graduates between 2005 and 2008 was 23 422 thus resulting in a response rate of 12.1 per cent. Stratified purposive sampling was utilised to select at least one employer from seven employment sectors until a saturation point was reached and the same themes started emerging across these various sectors. A total of 45 employer interviews were conducted. Literature control was used to ensure the trustworthiness of the findings. This involves finding, reading and critically analysing published research and theory on a given topic (Roberts & Burke, 1989). The research findings were thus carefully analysed and compared to related research findings of similar studies conducted nationally and internationally to establish their relevance and validity. Results: It was encouraging to note that more than 75 per cent of the NMMU graduates who participated in the study were in full-time employment at the time the study was conducted. Furthermore, 81 per cent of the respondents indicated that they were placed in a job relating to the university qualification they had obtained. Of the respondents, only 3.3 per cent were unemployed and more than a third of these respondents (33.6%) indicated that they were in the process of studying further. In addition to studying further, the other main reasons provided for being unemployed included lack of work experience (25.5%), lack of opportunities in the respondent’s particular field of study (15.1%), not seeking employment (13.1%), other (9.3%), and lack of employment opportunities in other fields (3.4%). It is significant that many of the employer interviews revealed that work-integrated learning and close working relationships between employers and NMMU academic departments significantly enhances the chances of NMMU graduates being employed as soon as they graduate. Thirteen (28%) of the 45 employers who were interviewed currently serve on advisory boards for particular academic programmes and testified to the usefulness of these committees. An overwhelming majority of the graduates in the sample (87.4%) agreed that academic staff should consult employers when designing or updating academic programmes and curricula. Furthermore, most of the graduates who responded to the survey (82.2%) who were not exposed to experiential or work-based learning as part of their studies felt that it would have enhanced their employability. When asked to rate employability attributes and skills according to their importance, the respondents who were employed in a job related to their qualification ranked professionalism, honesty, communication skills, problem solving, self-confidence, and teamwork as the top six. Similarly, employers indicated that important graduate attributes include: honesty and integrity; self-assurance; commitment and a drive to succeed; the ability to work without supervision and under pressure; and interpersonal skills such as empathy and approachability.
Page 1: Heather Nel 1 , Annemarie Barnard 2
Page 5: Pauw, K., Oosthuizen, M. and van de

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