Future Graduate Skills: A Scoping Study – Results

Key findings of the Future Graduate Skills Study include: 

• There should be greater communication and collaboration between universities, colleges and businesses, in terms of module design, teaching real-world problems, and organising work placements and internships.  
• While technical skills are important for certain specific roles, soft skills (such as communication, presentation, influencing behaviour change, analytical and critical thinking, and team working) are valuable in all areas of business, and should be taught in all courses. 
• The most effective way to impart new sustainability knowledge and skills would be to embed them within course curricula. This would allow students to understand how sustainability relates to their discipline rather than seeing it as a separate issue.  
• Both business leaders and graduates identified workplace skills as the main skills gap (e.g. negotiation, telephone skills, confidence working with superiors, and professionalism) 
• Business leaders consider volunteering, placements, and internships as valuable ways for students to improve and demonstrate their skillset, but graduates seemed less aware of the value of these extra-curricular activities for their future employment 

The results indicated that there are varying levels of agreement across several issues, but there is a clear consensus on the need for active collaboration and co-operation between universities, colleges and businesses in developing training and/or course material relating to sustainability, employability and workplace readiness.

The complete review of the results can be accessed in the Future Graduate Skills Study download section.