No abstract

The increased penetration of technology which brings efficiency to businesses globally has caused a shift in the skills that are required by the employees. One of the ways that the economy can reap the benefits of the digital revolution is by ensuring the development of appropriate skills that are mandated by the technological economy. Skills and educational mismatch have been noted to have a negative influence on employee and labour market outcomes. Due to this, several studies that focused on diagnosing the phenomena of skills and educational mismatch have been conducted in some developed countries. Despite the rate of economic growth that the UAE has achieved, far too little scholarly attention has been paid to skills and educational mismatch in the country. Therefore, this study’s objective is to measure the extent and nature of skills and educational mismatch from the perception of current workforce in the market. Using quantitative methodology, primary data in the form of surveys was collected from 206 respondents. SPSS was used to analyze the survey data in the form of descriptive statistics and cross tabulations. The results indicated that skills and educational mismatch is prevalent in the UAE across the private and public sector. Moreover, we found evidence suggesting the nature of skills mismatch is skills gap and the type of educational mismatch that is most prevalent in the UAE is horizontal mismatch. The results also indicate that engineers are some of the most affected by both skills and educational mismatch where most of the engineers are not working in engineering jobs compared to business management graduates most of who are working in their field of graduation. This paper contributes by creating new evidence in the area of skills and educational mismatch in the UAE’s labour market. It has bridged a gap by examine the state of mismatch in the UAE which can then allow to establish corrective actions to reduce the said mismatch in the country.

The ratio of academic scientists to the labor force in Malaysia has increased. However, the contribution of academic scientists to commercialize research discoveries remains limited. Successful research commercialization or university technology transfer requires entrepreneurial effort that may involve skills beyond the traditional roles of academics. The ability to identify the commercial opportunity of research, i.e. entrepreneurial opportunity recognition, has been proven to be a critical skill for an academic entrepreneur. Earlier findings in this area would have been far more useful if the antecedents of entrepreneurial opportunity recognition were recognized. Although self-regulated learning has been inferred to as informal entrepreneurship education for academic entrepreneurs, there has been a lack of evidence on how it influences their academic entrepreneurship performance. This paper examined the characteristics of academic entrepreneurs and the key success factors, whether academics’ opportunity recognition ability is influenced by their self-regulated learning behavior. A quantitative research design was employed based on a case study of a technological university in Malaysia involving 115 academic entrepreneurs. Structural equation modeling analysis results revealed that academics’ opportunity recognition and social capital are the most important determinants of their academic entrepreneurship performance. The efficiency of the Technology Transfer Office and the ease of securing funding play influential roles too, but to a smaller extent. Most importantly, opportunity recognition is strengthened by self-regulated learning, through frequent deliberate practices in information and knowledge seeking that enable scientists to be more creative and innovative in translating research into marketable products and technology.

Optimum comfort factors help in enhancing effective learning process in a classroom. The aim of this research is to study thermal comfort in school classroom for a more desirable learning process. Four schools consist of urban and rural schools in Selangor were selected for this study. Field measurement and questionnaires was used to measure the level of comfort and satisfaction of school teacher and student in classroom. Data was collected using Temperature data-loggers (SD500 Humidity/Temperature Data logger). The questionnaire was analysed based on Likert’s scale rating. Result from both on-field measurement and questionnaire survey suggests that thermal comfort have greater importance to focus. All the schools tested higher temperature than the recommended value. This study also outlines several improvement suggestions actions for better comfort level such as better air ventilation system and smaller class size