Are the skills developed at the university in demand in the labor market?

The aim of the university is to train people and teach them skills and knowledge to be able to work in a specific field. However, two of the main actors playing a role in the process, academics and companies, have different views on the competences that a graduate entering the labour market should have.

This is what the scientific publication written by Maria Pujol Jover, member of the Mel – Management & e-Learning research group, together with Carme Riera Prunera, Manuela Alcañiz and Helena Chuliá, published in the Revista d’Innovació Docent Universitària, dealt with.

Methodology

In order to gather the information, surveys were carried out both among academics at the Faculty of Economics and Business Studies of the University of Barcelona and among companies, only those, public or private, that had hired in the last five years at least one employee with a degree in economics or business, either as an intern or as part of their staff, were included.

The implementation and distribution of the questionnaires was carried out through specific online survey software (Survey Monkey) and a total of 185 teachers and 238 employers responded.

Results and conclusion

Companies demand a greater effort to strengthen both individual and collective competencies, as well as more practice-oriented learning, where competencies such as knowledge application and problem solving take on greater prominence.

The academic group, on the other hand, seems to have a more traditional vision of education, not seeking immediate practical efficiency at the cost of renouncing strict knowledge and cognitive progress. Even going to the limit, it seems that the university seeks the intellectual development of the student, confident that it will enable him to find practical solutions to concrete problems.

The company seems to be happy with the employee who knows how to deal with the setbacks that arise, often without warning, in the company’s daily schedule. The study also highlights the lower valuation of foreign languages by companies with respect to teachers.

The conclusions recommend seeking a rapprochement between academia and employers, where employers can express the deficiencies they find in new graduates and, for their part, academics can explain the long-term training needs that they believe a graduate will have.

Consult the study

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