Student Perspectives on Employability Skills in Liberal Arts Programs: A Canadian Case

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to gain further understandings of undergraduate students’ perspectives on employability skill development in the liberal arts programs, as well as the perceived influence of the identification of employability skills in course curricula on undergraduate students’ self-efficacy. Building on the results of a prior study on faculty perspectives in the liberal arts on employability skills, we also explored the ways students’ and faculty members’ perspectives were in alignment. Purposive sampling was used to select the undergraduate courses from three different undergraduate programs at the research site. Three relatively high enrolment courses were selected based on two key criteria: must be a second or third level undergraduate course and must be in a non-professional program in the liberal arts. Non-professional programs were considered programs where the students do not graduate with a specific professional designation or applied program. Two methods were used to collect the data for this project: an employability skill inventory and a survey distributed to students (N = 131). Course syllabi were also obtained to map employability skills. The findings of this study provide further insights with respect to the ways that employability matters to students and the ways in which students expect their instructors and institution to play a role in their employability development. Conclusions of this study underscore the need to consider bridging the disconnect between expectations of the students, the institution, and the faculty regarding employability development.