Delivering work-ready business graduates - keeping our promises and evaluating our performance

Abstract

Business schools globally are responding to calls for graduate work-readiness primarily through the development of employability skills, encompassing career management skills, and work integrated-learning (WIL). There has been considerable attention to clarifying precisely which skills should be developed, and how, but far less on evaluating employability skill provision and its impact on graduate work-readiness. This is increasingly important as industry worldwide continues to lament graduate inadequacies in certain employability skills and the extent to which they are job-ready.
 This paper outlines a systematic approach for evaluating employability skill outcomes and the effectiveness of learning programs in developing these skills. The approach was developed in a learning program dedicated to developing employability skills in business undergraduates in an Australian university. It may assist other universities in communicating, assessing, mapping and reporting their employability skills outcomes; an integral component of all business undergraduate programs, and now a requirement of all Australian higher education providers (TEQSA, 2011). The approach provides a means of evaluating program effectiveness in skill provision, enabling a more informed review of curricula content, assessment and pedagogical techniques to achieve better alignment with industry requirements.

Does the changing world of professional work need a new approach to accounting education?

“…Similar concerns have been expressed in other higher-income countries, e.g. Australia and New Zealand (Jackson et al, 2013;Jameson et al, 2012;Wells et al, 2009) and the United States (US) (e.g. Albrecht & Sack, 2000;Bolt-Lee & Foster, 2003).…”

“…Over time, several skill frameworks have been proposed with a variety of constituent skills sets (e.g. Arquero IFAC, 2010;Jackson et al, 2013;Montano et al, 2001;QAA, 2008). The notion of 'employability' emerged to infer a more general sense of 'graduate-ness' that would help one to get a graduate-level job (Bourner et al, 2011;Roepen, 2017;Rothwell & Rothwell, 2016).…”

“…Concern about the state of work-readiness in graduates by employers is not new (cf. Jackson et al, 2013); however, this executive was arguing that the ongoing digitisation of entry-level employment means that the expanding pool of accounting graduates across the world is now available to large organisations seeking to relocate 'back-office' functions to lower-cost locations (Howcroft & Richardson, 2012). Finally, he asked us, somewhat directly, 'What are UK business schools [as the ultimate governors of accounting education programmes] doing about the potential extinction of graduate accounting jobs?'…”

Personality Traits in Australian Business Graduates and Implications for Organizational Effectiveness

“…This might be achieved through student-centred learningencompassing active, problem-based and cooperative learning; and character education -the development of personal and relationship virtues (Benninga et al, 2006). Standalone non-technical programmes (see, for example, Jackson et al, 2013), coordinated efforts to embed skills and attributes into disciplinary content (Oliver, 2013) and WIL offerings (Freudenberg et al, 2011) offer valuable opportunities for developing attributes and traits. Targeted characteristics would include trustworthiness, generosity, flexibility, compliance, creativity, autonomy, accountability, resolve, humility, tolerance, respect and emotional intelligence.…”

Contributing to a graduate-centred understanding of work readiness: An exploratory study of Australian undergraduate students' perceptions of their employability

“…The research aims to identify whether graduates believe they will exit the program as work-ready and with the skills they believe are demanded in the workplace. We acknowledge that internship programs and other forms of practical experiences in the workplace are in place to assist students' preparation for employment (Jackson, Sibson, & Riebe, 2013). We are not assessing instruction methods or curricula design (Oliver, Whelan, Hunt, & Hammer, 2011).…”