Current Most Gaps in Skills of Fresh Graduates

Stakeholders’ qualitative feedback reported the following competencies with significant weaknesses in fresh engineering graduates: communications, management, practical skills, and foreign language.

In quantitative analysis overall, all situational gaps (except two for students) for all stakeholders (industry, faculty, students) were on the positive side, indicating a gap between satisfaction of engineering graduates’ competencies and importance of these competencies in the workplace. All situational gaps recorded a statistically significant difference; the gaps were higher for industry and faculty than those of students. In comparing satisfaction level of both academics and industry of engineering talent, it was found that stratification is rather low and there is no

Table 7.22 Highest situational gaps reported by the all stakeholder groups

Highest 7 Skills and competencies Satisfaction
Ranking	Industry	Students	Faculty
Topi
Top 2
Top 3
Top 4
Top 5
Top 6
Top 7

Highlights in yellow indicate repletion of the competency in the three categories, highlights in red indicate repetition in 2 categories, and highlights in green indicate only one repletion

statistically significant difference; both industry and academia are less satisfied about competencies than students’ own satisfaction with several competencies that had statistically significant lower mean for faculty and industry than that of students.

The highest situational gaps reported by the all stakeholder groups were in the following set of competencies: practical experience, innovation, professionalism, problem-solving, communications, critical thinking, decision-making, math/physics/sciences, lifelong learning, management, and entrepreneurship (see Table 7.22 for more details).

Interestingly, stakeholders of the three groups (industry, faculty, and students) reported the lowest satisfaction levels on competencies highly correlated with a iKBE ready engineer, such as innovation, entrepreneurship, management, leadership (and related attributed such as critical thinking and decision-making), problem-solving, multidisciplinary knowledge, interdisciplinary knowledge, and practical experience (see Table 7.23 for further details).