Faculty, students', and employers' perceptions of the characteristics of Thai private college students who major in management

The purpose of the study was to determine whether three stakeholder groups---faculty, students, and employers---had the same or different perceptions of three stakeholder groups of the characteristics of private college students in Thailand. Specifically, this study was designed to examine the perceptions of regarding the relative importance and the degree to which college students in management programs possessed of academic knowledge, school and work ethics, student intention, and extracurricular activities. All 402 respondents (35 faculty members, 351 senior students, and 16 employers) associated with six private college and universities were asked to rate items on a 5-point Likert scale of questionnaires and then to write comments in sections devoted to open-ended questions.;The findings in this study revealed a general consensus exists among the three groups: faculty members, college students and employers. All three respondent groups had positive perceptions of the quality of Thai private college graduates. Indeed, employers are more positive overall in their evaluations of private college graduates than either the college students themselves or their faculty members.;Regarding the ranking of the four key characteristics in this study (academic knowledge, school and work ethics, student intention, and extracurricular activities), all the three respondent groups ranked extracurricular activities as "least important." Faculty ranked school and work ethics as the most important, while students and employers ranked student intention as most important. The students had perceptions more closely aligned to employers than to their faculty. Their similar perceptions are shown in both numerical responses (i.e. means scores, ranking) and findings from open-ended questions. One exception is academic knowledge where faculty had closer mean scores to their students.;Using ANOVA, size of the college (small, medium, or large) showed greater differences than those found for respondent type (faculty, students, or employers). Nevertheless, the differences in perceptions among respondent types and among respondents at the three sizes of colleges were small.;The employers perceived overall work-related competencies of graduates in average to excellent level. They viewed graduates to be well prepared to work in high percentages compared to those rating students not well prepared to work.