Investigating the self-perceived acquired competencies of humanities graduates at a South African university
Abstract
The primary objective of this study was to investigate the self-perceived competencies acquired by humanities graduates at a South African university. This self-assessment enables graduates to assess their strengths and weaknesses regarding their competencies and estimate their employability. The secondary objective was to measure the employment status of humanities graduates. The study followed a quantitative approach using a cross-sectional survey design. The convenience sampling method was used since the self-administered questionnaire was distributed to graduates at two graduation ceremonies. Independent samples t-tests were done to compare the mean scores on the six dimensions of the competencies scale between gender, schools and degrees. Chi-square tests were done to establish whether there are associations between gender, faculty schools, degrees and employment status. Spearman rank-order correlation was performed to measure the correlations between the six factors of the competencies scale. The six individual competencies that scored the highest means were: “(1) tolerance, appreciation of different points of view, (2) written communication skills, (3) critical thinking, (4) English language proficiency, (5) working in a team, and (6) taking responsibility for decisions”. A follow-up study should be done among employers to determine what competencies they require from humanities graduates.
References
Albert, C. and M. A. Davia. 2018. “Job search strategies and underemployment in recent graduates first jobs in Spain.” Revista de Economía Aplicada 26(78): 21‒41.
Asonitou, S. 2015. “Employability skills in higher education and the case of Greece.” Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 175(1): 283‒290. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.1202.
Baird, A. M. and S. Parayitam. 2019. “Employers’ ratings of importance of skills and competencies college graduates need to get hired.” Education + Training 61(5): 622‒634. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ET-12-2018-0250.
Barnard, Y. F., G. J. Veldhuis, and J. C. G. M. van Rooij. 2001. “Evaluation in practice: Identifying factors for improving transfer of training in technical domains.” Studies in Educational Evaluation 27(3): 269‒290. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0191-491X(01)00030-X.
Bezuidenhout, M. 2011. “The development and evaluation of a measure of graduate employability in the context of the new world of work.” PhD dissertation. Pretoria: University of Pretoria.
Botha, P. A. 2012. “Unpublished report on the Humanities and Social Sciences Charter.” Mafikeng: North-West University.
Boyatzis, R. 2008. “Competencies in the 21st century.” Journal of Management Development 27(1): 1‒12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/02621710810840730.
Bridgstock, R. 2009. “The graduate attributes we’ve overlooked: Enhancing graduate employability through career management skills.” Higher Education Research & Development 28(1): 31‒44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07294360802444347.
Chan, S-J. and J-W. Lin. 2016. “Aiming for better employment: a holistic analysis from admission to labour market.” Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 38(3): 282‒296. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2016.1174405.
Chhinzer, N. and A. M. Russo. 2017. “An exploration of employer perceptions of graduate student employability.” Education + Training 60(1): 104‒120. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ET-06-2016-0111.
Cimatti, B. 2016. “Definition, development, assessment of soft skills and their role for the quality of organizations and enterprises.” International Journal for Quality Research 10(1): 97‒130. 10.18421/IJQR10.01-05.
Coetzee, M. 2014. “Measuring student graduateness: Reliability and construct validity of the Graduate Skills and Attributes Scale.” Higher Education Research & Development 33(5): 887‒902. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2014.890572.
Cohen, J. 1988. Statistical power analysis for the Behavioral Sciences. 2nd Edition. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Cotton, K. 2000. Developing Employability Skills. School Improvement Research Series: Research You Can Use Close-Up. No. 15. Portland, OR: Northwest Regional Education Laboratory.
Deaconu, A., C. Osoian, M. Zaharie, and S. A. Achim. 2014. “Competencies in higher education system: An empirical analysis of employers’ perceptions.” Amfiteatru Economic Journal 16(37): 857‒873.
Deepa, S. and M. Seth. 2013. “Do soft skills matter? Implications for educators based on recruiters’ perspective.” IUP Journal of Soft Skills 7(1): 1‒20.
Dowling, D., S. Rose, and E. O’Shea. 2015. “Reconsidering humanities programmes in Australian universities ‒ embedding a new approach to strengthen the employability of humanities graduates by empowering them as global citizens.” Social Alternatives 34(2): 52‒59.
Field, A. 2018. Discovering Statistics Using IBM SPSS Statistics. 5th Edition. California: Sage.
Fugate, M. and A. J. Kinicki. 2008. “A dispositional approach to employability: Development of a measure and test of implications for employee reactions to organizational change.” Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 81(3): 503‒527. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1348/096317907X241579.
García-Aracil, A. and R. Van der Velden. 2008. “Competencies for young European higher education graduates: Labor market mismatches and their payoffs.” Higher Education 55(2): 219‒239. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10734-006-9050-4
Gawrycka, M., J. Kujawska, and M. T. Tomczak. 2020. “Competencies of graduates as future labour market participants – preliminary study.” Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja 33(1): 1095‒1107. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1331677X.2019.1631200.
Grant, D. M., A. D. Malloy, and M. C. Murphy. 2009. “A comparison of student perceptions of their computer skills to their actual abilities.” Journal of Information Technology Education: Research 8: 141‒160. http://dx.doi.org/10.28945/164.
Griffin, K., J. Cangelosi, M. McMurtrey, and L. Lyons. 2017. “What skills do students think are important for jobs.” Competition Forum 15(2): 303‒311.
Gruzdev, M. V., I. V. Kuznetsova, I. Y., Tarkhanova, and E. I. Kazakova. 2018. “University Graduates’ Soft Skills: The Employers’ Opinion.” European Journal of Contemporary Education 7(4): 690‒698.
Harry, T., W. T. Chinyamurindi, and T. Mjoli. 2018. “Perceptions of factors that affect employability amongst a sample of final-year students at a rural South African university.” South African Journal of Industrial Psychology 44(1): 1‒10.
Hart Research Associates. 2015. Falling short? College Learning and Career Success. National Surveys of Business and Nonprofit Leaders and Current College Students. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities. https://www.aacu.org/leap/public-opinion-research/2015-survey-falling-short.
Harvey, N. and M. Shahjahan. 2013. Employability of Bachelor of Arts graduates. Sydney: Office for Learning and Teaching.
Hillage, J. and E. Pollard. 1998. Employability: Developing a framework for policy analysis. London: Department for Education and Employment.
Hwang, Y. 2017. “What Is the Cause of Graduates’ Unemployment? Focus on Individual Concerns and Perspectives.” Journal of Educational Issues 3(2): 1‒10.
Jackson, D. 2016. “Skill mastery and the formation of graduate identity in Bachelor graduates: Evidence from Australia.” Studies in Higher Education 41(7): 1313‒1332.
Jones, M., C. Baldi, C. Phillips, and A. Waikar. 2017. “The hard truth about soft skills: What recruiters look for in business graduates.” College Student Journal 50(3): 422‒428.
Kinash, S., L. Crane, M. M. Judd, and C, Knight. 2016. “Discrepant stakeholder perspectives on graduate employability strategies.” Higher Education Research & Development 35(5): 951‒967.
Knight, P. and M. Yorke. 2004. Learning, curriculum and employability in higher education. London: Routledge.
Kougioumoutzaki, F. and A. G. Kalamatianou. 2012. “Employment Status and Job-Studies Relevance of Social Science Graduates: The Experience from a Greek Public University.” International Journal of Economic Sciences and Applied Research 5(1):51‒75.
Lavender, J. 2019. “Soft Skills for Hard Jobs.” Journal of Continuing Education Topics & Issues 21(2): 48‒53.
Louvel, S. 2007. “A Place for Humanities Graduates on the Labour Market in the so‐called Knowledge Society: The French Case.” Higher Education in Europe 32(4): 291‒304. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/03797720802065957.
Maher, A. and S. Graves. 2008. Graduate employability: Can higher education deliver? Berkshire: Treshold Press.
Majid, S., C. M. Eapen, E. M. Aung, and K. T. Oo. 2019. “The Importance of Soft Skills for Employability and Career Development: Students and Employers’ Perspectives.” IUP Journal of Soft Skills 13(4): 7‒39.
Matsouka, K. and D. M. Mihail. 2016. “Graduates’ employability: What do graduates and employers think?” Industry and Higher Education 30(5): 321‒326. http://dx.doi.org/10. 1177/0950422216663719.
McKeown, T. and M. Lindorff. 2011. “The graduate job search process – a lesson in persistence rather than good career management?” Education + Training 53(4): 310‒320. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1108/00400911111138479.
Mishra, K. 2014. “Employability skills that recruiters demand.” IUP Journal of Soft Skills 8(3): 49‒55.
Mncayi, N. P. 2016. “The determinants of employment status of young graduates from a South African University.” PhD dissertation. Potchefstroom: North-West University.
Mncayi, P. and S. H. Dunga. 2016. “Career choice and unemployment length: A study of graduates from a South African university.” Industry and Higher Education 30(6): 413‒423. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1177/0950422216670500.
Oluwajodu, F., L. Greyling, D. Blaauw, and E. P. J. Kleynhans. 2015. “Graduate unemployment in South Africa: Perspectives from the banking sector.” SA Journal of Human Resource Management 13(1): 1‒9.
NACE see National Association of Colleges and Employers.
National Association of Colleges and Employers. 2016. The attributes employers want to see on new college graduates’ resumes. https://www.naceweb.org/center/.
Patacsil, F. and C. L. S. Tablatin. 2017. “Exploring the importance of soft and hard skills as perceived by IT internship students and industry: A gap analysis.” Journal of Technology and Science Education 7(3): 347‒368. http://dx.doi.org/10.3926/jotse.271.
Pop, C. and B. Khampirat. 2019. “Self-assessment instrument to measure the competencies of Namibian graduates: Testing of validity and reliability.” Studies in Educational Evaluation 60: 130‒139. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2018.12.004.
Saito, E. and T. Pham. 2019. “A comparative institutional analysis on strategies that graduates use to show they are ‘employable’: A critical discussion on the cases of Australia, Japan, and Vietnam.” Higher Education Research & Development 38(2): 369‒382. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/07294360.2018.1529024.
Sharma, V. 2018. “Soft Skills: An Employability Enabler.” IUP Journal of Soft Skills 12(2): 25‒32.
Statistics South Africa. 2019. Annual 2019 report. Pretoria: Statistics South Africa.
Stewart, C., A. Wall, and S. Marciniec. 2016. “Mixed signals: Do college graduates have the soft skills that employers want?” Competition Forum 14(2): 276.
Teijeiro, M., P. Rungo, and M. J. Freire. 2013. “Graduate competencies and employability: The impact of matching firms’ needs and personal attainments.” Economics of Education Review 34: 286‒295. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2013.01.003.
Teng, W., C. Ma, S. Pahlevansharif, and J. J. Turner. 2019. “Graduate readiness for the employment market of the 4th industrial revolution.” Education + Training 61(5): 590‒604. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ET-07-2018-0154.
Tsitskari, E., M. Goudas, E. Tsalouchou, and M. Michalopoulou. 2017. “Employers’ expectations of the employability skills needed in the sport and recreation environment.” Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism Education 20: 1‒9. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhlste.2016.11.002.
Vydrová, J. 2018. Student´s key competencies required for applicability in practice-students’ point of view. Scientific papers of the University of Pardubice. Series D, Faculty of Economics and Administration. 44/2018. Pardubice: University of Pardubice.
Wang, Y-F. and C-T. Tsai. 2014. “Employability of hospitality graduates: Student and industry perspectives.” Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Education 26(3): 125‒135. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10963758.2014.935221.
Weng, W. 2015. “Eight skills in future work.” Education 135(4): 419‒422.
Williams, A. M. C. 2015. “Soft skills perceived by students and employers as relevant employability skills.” PhD dissertation. Minneapolis, MN: Walden University.
Yorke, M. and P. Knight. 2006. Embedding Employability into the Curriculum. Vol. 3. York: Higher Education Academy.
Yorke, M. 2010. “Employability: Aligning the message, the medium and academic values.” Journal of Teaching and Learning for Graduate Employability 1(1): 2. http://dx.doi.org/10.21153/ jtlge2010vol1no1art545.
Copyright (c) 2021 Petrus Albertus Botha
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
This journal is an open access journal, and the authors and journal should be properly acknowledged, when works are cited.
Authors, copyright holders, may use the publishers version for teaching purposes, in books, theses, dissertations, conferences and conference papers.
A copy of the authors' publishers version may also be hosted on the following websites:
- Non-commercial personal homepage or blog.
- Institutional webpage.
- Authors Institutional Repository.
The following notice should accompany such a posting on the website: This is an electronic version of an article published in SAJHE, Volume XXX, number XXX, pages XXX “XXX", DOI. Authors should also supply a hyperlink to the original paper or indicate where the original paper (http://www.journals.ac.za/index.php/SAJHE) may be found.
Authors publishers version, affiliated with the Stellenbosch University will be automatically deposited in the University Institutional Repository SUNScholar.
Articles as a whole, may not be re-published with another journal.
The following license applies:
Attribution CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
