The Moderating Effects of Gender, Career, Moral Mindset on the Relationship Between the Graduate Attributes and Readiness for Employability Among Engineering Colleges Graduates in Oman

Abstract

The Omani higher education system has enlarged noticeably since 1970 both in the number of students and in the infrastructure. As a result, there has been a wide investment to provide quality higher educational institutes capable of providing suitable graduates to fulfill the requirements of both public and private sectors with a focus on females to assure equal gender educational and career opportunities chances. Therefore, graduates’ readiness for employability has become a major issue for Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) in Oman due to the growing concern from governments and industries on the quality of the graduates. Therefore, the main objective of the current study is to develop a conceptual framework for the graduate readiness for employability and incorporates the graduate attributes including human capital attributes, social capital attributes, individual attributes, institution-related attributes, and active learning attributes moderated by gender, career, and moral mindset among Engineering Graduate in Oman. The study uses available sources of existing literature based on the four main keywords ‘higher education’, ‘graduate attributes ‘or ‘readiness for employability, and ‘skills gaps in Oman’. The study also justified by the following theories which are human capital; education and economy development; behavior theory; and motivation theory. The literature utilized for this study covers the latest literature (from 2013 to 2020) extracted from Google Scholar, ProQuest, and Scopus, and other online resources. Based on the summary findings, the study develops a framework that analyses the effects of influential factors on the graduate readiness for employability that will be considered as an empirical study on the graduates of the engineering colleges in Oman. Moreover, the study also concluded that there are moderating effects of gender, moral mindset, and career mindset on the influence factors and the graduate readiness for employability among Omani engineering colleges’ students. The results of the study will fill the gap in understanding the main factors affecting the attainment of graduates’ readiness for employability skills in Oman. The study recommends justifying this conceptual framework by empirical data from the Engineering Graduate in the Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) and draw a policy guideline for ensuring of readiness of engineering graduates for employability in the HEIs in Oman.

The Effects of Human Capital Attributes on the Employability Readiness Among Engineering Graduates in the High Education Institute’s in Oman

“…The initial theoretical framework representing the relationship among the study variables is presented in figure 1 below. This portion of the framework is obtained from a wider study of factors affecting the Readiness for employability among Engineering graduates of the HEIs in Oman (Al Hinai et al, 2020b).…”

“…This link is considered as a principle factor for graduate readiness for employability connecting graduate attributes factors and graduates' attainment of employability skills, attitude, competencies, and knowledge (Clarke, 2018). Also, in an important study of graduates attributes factors affecting the Engineers graduates' attainment of the required Readiness for Employability skills, five attributes factors were believed to have the most influential matters on the acquirement of required employability skills including Human capital attributes, Social capital attributes, Individual attributes, Institution-Related attributes, and Active learning attributes (Al Hinai, Bhuiyan, & Husin, 2020a, 2020b, 2020cRahman & Bhuiyan, 2019).…”

The Effects Social Capital Attributes on the Employability Readiness Among Engineering Graduates in the High Education Institute’s in Oman

“…The graduates' Readiness for Employability skills required for Engineering graduates of the HEIs in Oman have been identified as Analytical thinking or critical thinking, Problem solving skills (The ability to analyze facts and situations), Creative thinking (The ability to develop and apply appropriate solutions), Communication skills including listening and questioning, Capacity for lifelong learning including readiness to contribute to new ideas, Capacity for lifelong learning including openness to new ideas, Teamwork including respecting others, cooperating, negotiating / persuading, and contributing to discussions, Professional ethics and morality, Entrepreneurial skills, Leadership skills, Proficiency in written and oral English, Specialization and industrial required technical skills, Capacity for applying knowledge in practice (Al Hinai et al, 2020b).…”

“…As a result, networking as a key component of social capital attributes, strongly influences the awareness of career information which in return affects positively graduates' readiness for employability (de Janasz, Forret, Haack, & Jonsen, 2013;Forret & Dougherty, 2004) . Therefore, social capital attributes when combined with human capital attributes and other factors such as individual attributes, and modern active learning environment have the ability to greatly improve graduates' readiness for employability (Al Hinai et al, 2020b).…”

“…Nevertheless, they consider those graduates are not ready for employment (Al-Barwani, Chapman, & Ameen, 2009). One of the essential shortfalls of the Higher Education is that its graduates are considered to have low readiness for employability skills (Al Hinai, Bhuiyan, & Husin, 2020a, 2020b, 2020cLim, Lee, Yap, & Ling, 2016;Rahman & Bhuiyan, 2019;Yang, Cheung, & Fang, 2015). As a result, it's harshly affecting the fresh graduates' employability and career performance at work (Al-Azri, 2016).…”