| The history of developed countries shows that the transition from the "elite education" to "mass education" in higher education will inevitably bring about the employment problem of graduates.All countries that have completed this transition have experienced or are experiencing the employment difficulties of graduates.In China,this problem is more prominent.Development of employability skills can be seen as a strategic thinking to solve the employment problem.It is one of the important perspectives from which many countries have made efforts to raise the employment rate and enhance national competitiveness.Employability,this term was first proposed by the British scholar Beveridge in 1909.In fact,it was put forward originally for the employment of college graduates.Then,the concept has been widely applied to various groups of labor.From the existing domestic literature research,it is found that three propositions in the related current research are generally recognized:(1)employability should be developed;(2)employability skills can be effectively developed in higher education;(3)once employability skills are developed,they can be migrated to employment.This clarifies the necessity for college students to acquire these employability skills and the important role that higher education institutions play in developing enployability skills.This study is based on the basic prerequisites mentioned above,and three hypotheses are proposed.Many researchers keep claiming that a large nunber of studies have demonstrated the relationship between higher education and employment.There are also some researchers measuring the influence on the employment rate of the graduates who are once in organizations from the influence of organizations on the development of college students' employability.However,whether employability skills are positively correlated with work performance or not hasn't been well-proven.Thus,eombining the subject on the development of employability skills of the graduates from local institutes of higher education,the first hypothesis can be put forward in this research as:the employability skills of graduates are observably positive correlated with their work performance(the salary and satisfaction level in the initial employment).Though the employability model has clearly explained the significance of higher education on the development of graduates' employability skills theoretically.Besides,related research concerning the term has also proven such a relation.However,this cannot explain why the employability ievei of different students vary a lot facing the same employability activity.(Here,we do not take students' innate factors into consideration.)Concerning this,we can make the second hypothesis:college graduates'employability activity is positively reiated to their work performance(the salary and satisfaction level in the initial employment).Manta Yorke and Peter T Knight,two British scholars,divided the employability activity into two types:embedded activity and bok-on activity.The embedded activity refers to employability activities included in courses.While the bok-on activity refers to development of course-independent employability activities in the form of separated modules.Im order to further verify the relationship between the form of employability activities and students' employability skills,this study proposes the third hypothesis:bok-on employability activities are positively correlated with employability skills.Considering the impracticability of the measurement of the performance of embedded employability activities,the bok-on activities was taken as the research object.To ensure the consistency of development activities,the researcher did these all by herself.It took 12 weeks,that is,three hours every week and 36 hours in total,mainly in the form of group counseling.The bok-on activity consists of three main modules:communication and collaboration,self-development and job interview.In order to validate the first two hypotheses,this study used hypothesis testing methods such as document method,investigation method(including questionnaires and interviews).First,with an survey of 59 employers and interviews with 15 graduates,the expert meeting method was used to screen and construct the employability indicators.Then,based on the scale developing procedures proposed by Devellis,as well as existing research results,the initial scale of employable skills of graduates in line with this study was made.290 subjects were randomly selected from the 1978 fresh graduates of Nantong University who have signed up in March,2013.And the reliability and validity of the scale were tested with them.Finally,after tested and revised,the scale was put into use again,2702 graduates who have signed up before May?2013 from the 2013 session(excluding those who participated in the pre-test)and 3,361 who have signed up before May,2014 from the 2014 session were sampled to participate in the questionnaire.A structural model of college students' employable skills was achieved with a set of accounting and analysis,which mainly includes description of the present condition of the development of graduates' employability skills in colleges,accounting the statistics concerning the initial employment of graduates and analysis of the relations among variables.In order to further explore whether there were significant differences in the development of employability skills by sex,habitat and professional demographic variables,this study used the independent sample t method to test the difference of gender in each study variable;and it used variance analysis to analyze other sequenced demographic variables.For the third research question,this study adopts the quasi-experimental research method to carry out the design of activities of graduates' employability development and evaluate and compare the performance before and after the implementation of these activities.The main findings of this study are:(1)Graduates' employability skills are positively correlated with salaries of their initial employment,and employability skills are negatively correlated with satisfaction level of their initial jobs.According to the analysis of interviews,there are three reasons for this strange relationship.First,it is related with the expectations of graduates.Most of the graduates have a high expectation for their first jobs,and in the face of the highly competitive labor market,their expectations are difficult to be met.Thus,the gap between the ideal and reality will have negative effect on the satisfaction level of their first jobs.Second,it is related to the nature and status of the school.Compared with some famous universities,Nantong University is an ordinary local university,both in terms of the quality of students,ability of talent cultivation,or in academic reputation,social resources and other aspects,and therefore the employment quality of graduates is affected.Third,it is related to the cultivation of employability skills.In general,the higher the ability a student has,his or her requirements on the job will be higher accordingly.Thus,to a certain extent,students with higher employability skills may be more unsatisfied with their first jobs.(2)The employment development activities of college students conducted by schools are related to the initial salary of graduates,and the employment development activities are significantly positive correlated with the satisfaction level of their initial employment.This shows that school-based employability development activities can help more college students to get higher salaries more easily or more satisfied with the work.(3)Bok·on employability development activities for college students are significantly positive correlated with employability skills.This shows that although there are different views on various employment training courses or activities during the school period,the validity of the bok-on employability development activities for college students is affirmed.Through a comprehensive analysis,the final conclusion are as follows:first of all,the acquisition of employability skills has positive influence on increasing the employment rate of graduates.This conclusion is crucial,for it is related to the value of the research on the term,as well as the promotion of application and large-scale training of employability skills.With in-depth investigation and analysis,we not only defined the main indicators of employability skills,but also clarified the relationship between these skills and the employment of graduates in local universities,which offers a solution for effectively solving employment difficulties of graduates in the near future.Second,activities of employability development conducted by schools can improve the employment condition of graduates.The practice in Nantong University reveals the efficacy of employability activities on students conducted by schools.It also proves that local universities can play a more active and important role in solving the employment difficulties of graduates.Third,though the value of bok-on employability activities has been verified,continuous exploration and improvement is needed.More innovative strategies and methods is still needed for higher efficiency.The innovation points of this research lies in the innovation of perspective,method and research itself.Based on demonstration and investigation,a model of employability skills of graduates from local universities was formed with the application of diverse research strategies.With the regression analysis of measures on graduates,employability skills development and their job performance,the bok-on activities was designed and job performance was measured.Also,this research has its limitations.First,it's difficult to grasp the overall condition of employability skills of graduates in China from a macro view for the development of employability is an issue of Macro Labor Economics.Second,as different schools have variable conditions,this study probably could not adhere to the condition of all the local universities.Third,the scientificalness of measuring and evaluation methods applied in this study still need improvement. |
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