Employability of Engineering Technology Graduates at a Vietnamese University: An Assessment from Employers’ Perspectives

Abstract

Employer feedback plays a crucial role in setting developmental directions for higher education and keeping university courses and curricula adaptive to the growing needs of the industry. This paper aims to analyze employers’ perspectives on the employability of engineering technology graduates after six months of working at the enterprise. An online survey of 47 items and sample characteristics was sent to employers who worked with graduates of seven engineering technology majors from a public Hanoi-based university. After two months, 234 answers were accepted and analyzed with the SPSS 26.0 software. The results showed that four components of graduates’ employability were at a medium level. Additionally, the graduates’ attitudes and other attributes were evaluated the best, followed by technical skills. Technical knowledge and generic skills were found to be at the lower level of employability. There was no difference in employability assessments by employers’ different age groups, but a significant difference was discovered in employability assessment between foreign-owned and private-owned enterprises.

Keywords

• Engineering technology
• human capital
• technical knowledge
• technical skills
• higher education
• employers