The role of transferable skills in the educational mismatch of employed graduates
Authors
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Károly Zerényi
Affiliationgraduated at the Budapest University of Economics and Business Faculty of Commerce, Hospitality and Tourism as economist and teacher of economics (with specialization in tourism and catering). He is a PhD candidate at the Doctoral School of Education of Eötvös Loránd University, who has been working in the Hungarian Central Statistical Office as a statistical analyst since 2022. His research interest is the matching/mismatching between qualifications and job requirements, focusing on the importance of transferable skills in higher education and the labour market.
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Zsuzsa Mátrai
Affiliationis DSc, professor emerita of Eötvös Loránd University. Her research fields are the follows: history of education of the USA, social science education, assessment and evaluation, examination systems, curriculum theory and research methodology. She is the Hungarian representative of many international research projects connecting the topics of citizenship education, leaving examination system and subject item banking. She was the member, secretary and then president of the Educational Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, furthermore several international professional organizations including the International Association for Educational Assessment.
Abstract
Amidst the labour shortage, higher education institutions are trying to adapt as best as possible to the needs of the world of work. However, some students leaving higher education find themselves in jobs that do not match their level of education and/or their field of specialization. In the former case, it is a vertical mismatch/incongruence, in the latter, it is a horizontal mismatch/incongruence. The sector of tourism and catering is one of the fields where the rate of educational mismatch among graduates is higher than average, therefore, in addition to job-specific skills, transferable skills are also needed. Based on the questionnaire survey made in this research, employed graduates from the field of tourism and catering were able to utilize their transferable skills very well not only in incongruent but also in congruent employment. In addition, a statistically significant relationship can be demonstrated between the use of certain educational methods, such as problem-based, inquiry-based and project-based learning, and transferable skills elements. Consequently, increasing the proportion of transferable skills in higher education is beneficial for both congruent and incongruent graduates, and also contributes to improving their employability.
Keywords:
labour shortage, vertical and horizontal match/mismatch, transferable skills, higher education, employed graduatesCitation data from Crossref and Scopus
