Sustainability segmentation of business students: Toward self-regulated development of critical and interpretational competences in a post-truth era

Students’ Perspective on Quality Assurance in Higher Education in the Context of Sustainability: A PLS-SEM Approach

“…In this respect, it can be noticed that the quality of the educational process had an important role and can support the idea that the acquisition and assessment of competencies for a sustainable development of society require different ways of teaching and learning [36]. Besides, to prepare students for dealing with the complexity of sustainability issues, it is important to develop critical and interpretational competencies in students [39], and in this context, the results of this study highlight the importance of establishing a suitable curriculum and, implicitly, the importance of the quality of the educational process on developing students' competencies. On the other hand, the results show that the chances of employment in the labor market are positively and directly influenced by the quality of the educational process (H4), which means that it is necessary for universities to continuously redefine the content of their disciplines in order to adapt their educational offerings to the needs of the labor market, as Sá and Serpa [8] suggest.…”

“…From a theoretical point of view, this study proposes a conceptual model that links the elements of quality management in higher education with students' competencies and chances of employment in the labor market, highlighting their direct and indirect relationships. Moreover, although there are other studies that analyze students' perceptions of various aspects of the subject [35][36][37][38][39], this study integrates them into a more comprehensive model and provides empirical evidence of their complex relationships.…”

“…A number of students' perception studies have been conducted on the topic studied in this research [35][36][37][38][39]. Thus, Nicolescu and Nicolescu [35] used PLS-SEM to construct an employability confidence model for business students using the skills relating to employability.…”

“…In this respect, Zsóka, Szerényi, Széchy, and Kocsis [38] emphasize the importance of understanding the attitudes and behavior of students regarding the environment and the importance of finding effective ways to influence this behavior through education. As well, Lambrechts et al [39] conducted a study on 458 students in business management/marketing from a Belgian Higher Education Institution to investigate the students' perspectives on sustainability and the possible consequences for competence-based higher education. This study is a segmentation study that frames the variety of student dispositions relating to sustainability attitudes.…”

“…Comp1-Knowledge and competencies in the field of specialty Comp2-Communication skills/competencies Comp3-Teamwork competencies Comp4-Organizational skills and competencies Comp5-Analytical and problem-solving skills Comp6-Entrepreneurial skills [7,8,[19][20][21]34,36,39,43,44] Employability (Emp) Emp1-The chances of being hired after completing your studies in the field of your studies Emp2-The chances of being hired after completing your studies in a related field [7,8,35,43,44] Source: authors, based on the mentioned references and survey.…”