Knowledge and Skills Level of Graduate Civil Engineers Employers and Graduates’ Perceptions

Abstract

The Civil Engineering Program at Sana'a University, Yemen aims to provide quality education that develops students’ knowledge, skills and aspirations in preparation for a career, nationally and regionally. This research aims at finding out to which extent the employability skills are available to the program graduates. Comprehensive data collected through questionnaires and interviews on the main issue of this study, the focus of which is if the new graduates have the knowledge and interpersonal skills to meet the requirements of the labour market from the perception of graduates and employers. The output of the analysis shows that graduates gained sufficient technical knowledge, but missed on an early preparation to meet the challenges they may face in the workplace, particularly project management and key transferable skills. As this study might be the first of its type in engineering colleges in Yemen, the findings may provide appropriate inputs to improving engineering education, and particularly the program’s study plans.

A Roadmap to the Development of Key Competencies of Engineering and Technology Graduates

“…These include finding information, ranking information and evaluating the quality and reliability of the information [5] A set of teaching and learning strategies that will enable students to acquire these skills are proposed, Table no. (2). It is here to emphasize the importance of including a set of courses in the curriculum, as necessitated, to enable students to respond effectively to these strategies and gain the required skills.…”

“…AlMunifi and his co-author [2] aim at finding out to which extent the employability skills are available to engineering graduates. They collected comprehensive data through questionnaires and interviews that focus on the issue if the new graduates have the knowledge and interpersonal skills to meet the requirements of the labor market from the perception of graduates and employers.…”

“…Education institutions should give more attention and affairs to help their students to gain skills to enable them to meet the employment requirements [1], [2], [3].…”

“…The workplace uncovered the lack of skills that are expected from new graduates. In addition to the weakness in negotiation and decision-making skills, it also was found that graduates of engineering and technology programs struggle to well-apply the technical knowledge they have gained [6], [2]. There is thus a need for employability skills to be valuable assets to enhance employability amongst graduates and meet employers' expectations [7].…”

Key Management Skills for Integral Civil Engineering Education

“…Nevertheless, some researchers have observed the accreditation institutions trend to overrate the technical competencies in detriment of the others, setting the focus in the contents, and not in the thought process that has to be carried out by an engineer [18]- [20]. This can be detrimental to students, who end up their studies with a large set of technical skills but lacking management and key transferable skills, which are essential to their professional development and labor insertion [21]. For this reason, identifying the most valued-by-employer skills and competencies has become a main issue, also considering the increasing demand for non-technical or behavioral skills like oral or written communication.…”