The effect of curriculum design on the employability competency of Malaysian graduates

Abstract

For a country to support the transition of all economic sectors to a knowledge-driven one, attract foreign investment, and drive labor productivity, it is necessary to have access to skilled workforce. However, there is currently an insufficient talent supply and the workforce demand does not match the talent supply because of low graduate employability stemming from the low quality of higher education in Malaysia. To address this issue, this study proposed a conceptual framework to illustrate the perception of graduates towards the impact of curriculum design, the curriculum vision, the operationalization of the curriculum vision, the curriculum delivery, and curriculum evaluation, on employability competency. A sample of 299 employed graduates participated in this research. Smart Partial Least-Squares (SmartPLS) version 3 software was used to evaluate the hypotheses of the survey. The findings of this study reveal that curriculum design positively and significantly influenced employability competency. Hence, this study contributes important insights into the implementation of effective curriculum design, striking a balance between practical and theoretical bases, in private and public Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).