Enhancing Graduate Employability: Why Higher Education Institutions have problems with teaching generic skills?

One debate among business owners and policymakers centres on whether higher education institutions (HEIs) have failed to transform the younger generation by developing their competencies, skills, values and behaviours to enable them to be fit for the world of work. While previous studies have considered the importance of skills development and its assessment in many contexts, there appears to have been limited scholarly research on employability issues within the higher education system (HES) in Nigeria. In seeking to address this, it is vital to understand how HEIs in Nigeria conceptualize generic skills and why HEIs have problems with teaching generic skills in their programmes. By adopting a qualitative approach, based on interviews with senior academics, industry executives and final-year undergraduates, this study found that many of the HEIs do not facilitate the teaching of high-level generic skills in their programmes. Some of the factors attributed to this include poor learning environment, lack of staff with industry experience, and over-dependence on theoretical content teaching. The findings are significant for reorienting the HE curriculum developers to align with the needs of the industry and society. Regarding implications for policy, we recommend that enterprise education be made mandatory for primary, secondary and tertiary education curriculum in Nigeria. Finally, we advocate more inclusive and interpretive research for greater understanding of the issues, and to offer useful data for policy-making and decision-making on the perspectives of preparing graduates for work

Does PhD Qualification Improve Pedagogical Competence? A Study on Teaching and Training in Higher Education

Purpose: There has been much debate in recent times about the factors that improve the quality of teaching in higher education (HE) institutions. This has been especially fuelled by the increasing importance attached to Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) qualification. To fill the existing gap in the current literature in this regard, this study aims to investigate whether HE teachers (lecturers) who undergo pedagogical training (PT) in addition to obtaining PhD qualification possess higher knowledge and pedagogical competencies (PCs) than those that relied only on having PhD qualification without further teaching qualifications. Design/Methodology/Approach: Drawing upon data collected through a structured questionnaire administered to 1174 Nigerian HE teachers in various disciplines from 39 HE institutions, in addition to two focus groups; the study adopts a mixed methods research. The quantitative data were analyzed descriptively while qualitatively data were coded, transcribed verbatim and analyzed thematically. Findings – This article proposes that teachers who undergo PT in addition to obtaining PhD tend to have more PCs and perform better than those that have not undergone any form of PT. Also, it found a statistically significant difference between PCs of HE teachers who have undergone PT in addition to PhD qualification from those without PT. The implication is that teachers who have undergone PT are more effective in facilitating teaching and learning than those who have not completed PT. Research Limitations/Implications: Despite the merits of the mixed research method, a major limitation of this study is the failure to compare students’ achievements or successes based on the two distinct samples. However, the limitations create opportunities for further studies into the subject matter. Originality/Value – This study is timely, given that Nigeria (like many African countries) has a low quality HE system and low graduate outcomes (related to knowledge, employability, and skills). More so, research into pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and practices are rare or non-existent in the literature related to Nigeria and other African countries’ HE system

The costs and performance of the medical activities of the Sussex Police Helicopter Unit

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