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The role of women in the architecture and design industry is aligned with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, which aims to increase the participation of women in the Saudi construction sector. Saudi female graduates from architectural and design schools are currently working in most of the mega projects underway in Riyadh; however, they face certain challenges at the beginning of their working lives due to the gap between the skills acquired during an architectural and design education and those needed for employability.

This study evaluates the employability skills of Saudi female cooperative education (COOP) students and graduates from architectural schools in Riyadh. A quantitative approach is taken, and two questionnaires are administered: one for female COOP students and graduates from the college of architecture and design in one of the private universities in Riyadh and the other for employers from different architectural firms and governmental organizations in Riyadh. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the research data.

The research findings suggest that practical experiences and on-site observation activities should be provided, and sustainability solutions and applications should be incorporated into the curriculum to bring architecture education closer to the architectural profession and highlight the role of universities in supporting graduates' skills development.

It is worth mentioning that the results of this study were based on the survey distributed to architecture and interior female students in a private university in Saudi Arabia. The number of students surveyed in this study is not large enough to generalize the survey results to the entire population of architecture and interior design students in the kingdom and in the world. The study will be extended to include more participants from male and female students in other universities in Saudi Arabia to investigate the gaps in employability skills in the field of architecture and interior design in the Kingdom.

The study has practical and policy implications for further development and upcoming challenges as the labor market seems to improve and innovate every day. The study suggests providing practical experiences and onsite observation activities and incorporating sustainability solutions and applications into the curriculum.

The originality of this study is that it focuses on the importance of some employability skills, such as research and budgeting aspects, Sustainability solutions and applications for students that have not been mentioned in the previous studies.

The current study investigates the factors influencing graduates’ perceived employability by utilizing the stimulus-organism-response theory, in the post pandemic era.

A quantitative approach was employed to examine the hypotheses of the research framework through partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) on the SmartPLS software.

The result indicates that course structure has a positive effect on students’ grit and community of inquiry (CoI). Also, students’ grit and CoI have a positive relationship with students’ performance, while students’ performance has a positive relationship with perceived employability. Moreover, students’ grit, CoI and students’ performance sequentially mediated course structure and perceived employability, whereas readiness and self-directed learning strengthen the relationship between students’ performance and perceived employability.

The findings will benefit university management, government and potential employers on how confident the student is in the chances of a future career after graduating from a higher institution.

Based on the principles of the human capital theory, this study investigates the role of the quality management system (QMS) in higher education institutions (HEIs) in developing successful employability attributes among graduates. Considering industry as a prominent stakeholder in academia, the authors took industry–academia collaboration as the mediating variable.

Using the European Foundation for Quality Management model, the author analyzed how QMS in public HEIs located in London, the United Kingdom (UK), impacts business management, computer science and engineering students' employability. Following the nonprobability convenience sampling technique, this study included data from 324 local and international students.

The structural analysis identified QMS as a significant factor in enhancing students' employability, and industry–academia collaboration is found to act as a partial mediator in this relationship.

The management of HEIs in developing countries can take valuable guidelines from this study and integrate QMS in their institutions in developing their students' employability, as it is being done by HEIs in the UK.

This paper examines the influence of micro-credential learning on students' perceived employability. In addition, the study aims to explore different components that will help students to gain knowledge, enhance their careers and develop their human capital (social, cultural and scholastic capital). Hence, the study also analyzed the mediating role of human capital on the aforementioned association.

Explanatory research was conducted by utilizing a correlational research design. A questionnaire comprising of closed-ended items was utilized in the study. The data was analyzed by employing PLS-SEM technique.

Our findings stipulate that micro-credential learning is an essential component to improve students' perceived employability. The study identified that micro-credential programs have a positive relationship with students' perceived employability. Moreover, the findings that micro-credential learning significantly impacts students' human capital, i.e. cultural, social and scholastic capital. Additionally, human capital acts as a significant mediator in the relationship between micro-credential learning and students' perceived employability. Moreover, participation in micro-credential learning can ensure that students can identify diverse career directions, seek information about the labor market and educational system, attain relevant qualifications for their vocations, and develop a plan for their future.

Micro-credential programs are short and focused educational programs that offer specialized knowledge and skills in a particular area. These programs are becoming increasingly popular in the modern workforce to upskill or reskill quickly and efficiently. However, lack of empirical evidence is the ultimate gap in determining the importance of micro-credential learning; as the limited literature is unable to determine the importance of MCL on students' perceived employability. Thus, the study identifies the impact of micro-credential learning on students' perceived employability.

Doctoral programs play a crucial role in promoting innovation and technology transfer in universities. To design these programs effectively and with a co-design perspective, it is essential to consider all stakeholders involved in the process, including teachers, students and employers. The main objective of this study is to enhance postgraduate programs to improve students' employability.

This empirical study was conducted over a three-year period and employed semi-structured interviews as its primary research methodology. In the first phase, 21 in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with managers from various sectors. The second phase involved 20 interviews, and the final phase of the study included 18 interviews with the same managers from previous phases.

The study's main results revealed that the international networks, language proficiency and analytical skills of doctoral students were highly valued by employers. The main findings come from companies with doctoral students. Therefore, the skills were identified during the learning experience of the PhD graduates in the companies.

The study's results can guide improvements in postgraduate program curricula and design to enhance students' employability.

This research presents a novel approach to its findings. On the one hand, the study's conclusions may provide valuable insights for business agents, encouraging them to hire PhD students. On the other hand, it aims to drive necessary changes that promote more PhD students' focus on non-academic careers, creating significant value for research and innovation in the private sector.

This study aims to explore the impact of engaging in serious leisure (SL) on the well-being (WB) and self-perceived employability (PE) of university students while also considering the role of career adaptability (CA) as a mediator.

A total of 905 domestic undergraduate students from China completed an online survey.

The findings reveal that participation in SL positively influences WB and PE. Additionally, the results indicate that CA mediates the SL-WB relationship but not the SL-PE relationship.

The theoretical contribution of this research comes from advancing our understanding of sustainable career theory through empirical testing of SL, PE, and CA on WB outcomes within a higher education setting. The practical implications of this study involve providing universities with strategies to support domestic Chinese undergraduate students in enhancing their WB and PE through active engagement in SL pursuits and the development of CA. Moreover, our findings serve as a foundation for future research investigating whether insights gained from domestic Chinese undergraduate students can provide solutions on a global scale to address the persistent challenges of improving student WB and PE.

This article aims to investigate whether there is a relationship between education for the labor market in the post-pandemic stage and the educational quality of universities, taking as a sample a group of Latin American countries and their main trading partners. Reference is made to the Global Competitiveness Report 2020 of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) index, which evaluates the quality of universities.

Correlations, clusters and T-tests were generated to test for significant differences, resulting in two blocks of countries being identified with statistically significant differences in educational efforts to prepare their citizens for the labor market and the quality of their universities.

It is concluded that there are examples of Latin American countries that, although they are emerging economies, are updating their educational systems at an accelerated pace to meet the needs demanded by the labor market, such as Chile and Argentina. In addition, there are some particular cases of Latin American QS universities that although they are not at a high level in their overall educational quality as a university, compared to North American and Asian universities, their graduates do show a high employability index. This means that in the graduate profile, these universities are also accelerating efforts to position them at a high level of preparedness to respond to the jobs and markets of tomorrow, just as the universities in developed economies do.

Although the sample size is a limitation of this work, since it is based on secondary information reported by the WEF (2020) and the QS World University Rankings (2021), it contributes value by analyzing specific cases. Despite its limitations, the study yields meaningful results that put the challenges of post-pandemic employment and the role that universities play in a comprehensible framework.

These results put special attention on the work of universities as a crucial entity to prepare citizens to develop the competencies needed for the post-pandemic labor market, especially in terms of critical thinking and digital skills. Human capital formation will drive the post-pandemic recovery process of leading countries and universities.

The present study aims to investigate the reasons for the gap between academic education and the required skills of the labor market in Iran.

For this purpose, the authors adopted a thematic analysis method. The participants in the study were connoisseurs from universities and research institutes in Iran, who were selected with purposeful sampling methods of snowball type. To collect the data, the authors used a semi-structured interview and performed a thematic analysis for data analysis.

The findings showed that the views and perceptions of the connoisseurs participating in the study about the reasons for the gap between academic education and the skills required in the labor market in Iran can be classified into four main themes including lack of attention to labor market needs in the academic curricula, lack of attention to practical and entrepreneurial skills in the academic curricula, the weak link between universities and industry and society, and shortage of academic resources and equipment in some academic disciplines.

The present study had three implications. First, the human capital theory, the social closure theory, the positional conflict theory and the labor market segmentation theory are more compatible with the labor market of Iranian graduates, compared to other theories of the labor market. Second, the lack of coordination between academic education and the required skills in the labor market has weakened the Iranian economy. Third, the absence of practical and entrepreneurial skills in academic graduates has led to increased unemployment in Iranian society.

The job satisfaction of university graduates can serve as an indicator of success in their professional development. At the same time, it can be a measure of higher education systems’ effectiveness. The purpose is to assess the relationship of university graduates’ socio-demographic characteristics, aspects of their degree program, experiences in the labor market and current working conditions and their job satisfaction.

The data were collected from a survey conducted at 11 Chilean universities with 534 graduates. An ordinal logistic regression model was fit to calculate job satisfaction probabilities for different graduate profiles.

The results show that sex, field of study, gross salary and horizontal match are related to graduates’ job satisfaction. Men and graduates in education and humanities are more likely to report being satisfied with their current job. Those graduates receiving higher salaries and those who are horizontally well-matched report higher levels of job satisfaction.

This study contributes to expanding knowledge about the job satisfaction of university graduates. Specifically, based on the results obtained, it introduces the idea of aspiration fulfillment as a possible determinant of job satisfaction in different fields of study. This can serve as a starting point for research that delves into differentiated expectations for graduates from different disciplines.

Numerous studies have shown that minority workers are disadvantaged in the labour market due to stereotypes and discrimination. However, published research on résumé screening has overlooked the effects of multiple social categorisations pertaining to candidates' gender, education and origin. This study addresses this gap and examines whether the gender, the level of education and the national origin cues mentioned in the résumé affect the perceived employability of candidates.

This study employs an experimental between-subjects factorial design in that 12 résumés varying in gender, education and national origin were rated by 373 Portuguese working adults.

The results documented a gender premium as women were favoured in interpersonal and job skills but not in job suitability, and an education premium, since higher educated candidates were preferred despite their gender and origin. No meaningful interactions for gender × education × national origin were observed, which suggests that ingroup favouritism and outgroup discrimination in résumé screening can be averted.

The findings endorse a multidimensional view of perceived employability by investigating candidates' skills and job suitability from the viewpoint of the decision-makers, which extends our understanding of résumé-screening discrimination. This is critical to prevent hiring discrimination at an earlier career stage, which can increase youth employment and enhance the integration in the labour market of local minorities such as women, inexperienced workers and second-generation immigrants.