The influence of individual and organisational factors on university students’ generic skills

Abstract

It is reported that the generic skills of Malaysian university graduates do not meet the employers‘ expectation and worse, the issue has led to increase in unemployment rate. Undergoing industrial training is a good platform to improve generic skills. Thus, the objective of this study is to examine students‘ generic skills (communication, teamwork, critical thinking and problem solving, and moral and professional ethics) improvement after undergoing industrial training. It also seeks to examine the differences in students‘ generic skills based on the demographic of students, supervisors and organisation. This study also investigates the relationship between students‘ motivation, supervisors‘ leadership styles, job scope and organisational culture on students‘ generic skills. The study further examines the influence of individual (students‘ demographic and motivation) and organisational (supervisors‘ demographic, organisational demographic, supervisors‘ leadership styles, job scope and organisational culture) factors on students‘ generic skills. It engages pre- and post training surveys by distributing questionnaires to social science, science and engineering students at six public universities in Malaysia. A series of interviews with nine employers and twelve students were also conducted. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software was used to analyze the data using paired sample t-test, independent sample t-test, analysis of variance (ANOVA), correlation and multiple regressions analyses. Results indicate that all four generic skills were improved significantly after students have undergone the industrial training. There are differences between all demographic factors with regards to students‘ teamwork, critical thinking and problem solving, and moral and professional ethics skills. There are also relationships between students‘ motivation, supervisors‘ leadership styles, job scope and organisational culture on students‘ communication and teamwork skills. The results show that both individual and organisational factors have influenced students‘ communication, teamwork, and moral and professional ethics skills. Results from qualitative data demonstrate that employers and students agreed that there is an improvement in communication and critical thinking and problem solving skills after completing the industrial training. Interview responses highlight that factors such as motivation, supervisors and job scope have influenced students‘ generic skills. This study contributes to the industrial training programmes mainly to public universities in Malaysia by examining generic skills improvement using two phases of data collection and identifying factors that influence skill improvement. The results recommend that the industrial training should be made compulsory in private higher learning institutions. Among recommendations to improve the programme is through inclusion of experiential components during learning process at university and emphasis on mutual understanding between higher learning institutions and host organisations. The results also implicate industrial training stakeholders as they are able to identify individual and organisational factors that influence students‘ generic skills. Thus, among recommendations are the stakeholders need to consider both factors in selecting training placement and achieving the training effectiveness by increasing students‘ motivation, knowing appropriate leadership styles, giving the relevant job and implementing suitable work culture in the organisation as these factors are proven to improve students‘ generic skills.