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.