Search results

This research moves beyond a focus on employability skills and explores student perceptions of preparedness for graduate life in a more holistic manner.

Final-year business students were asked to outline their concerns regarding graduate life and the personal and professional challenges anticipated in their careers. The results are presented in the context of graduate capitals, which is a broader view than the more traditional skills-based approach.

The results indicate students do not feel underprepared for the workplace in terms of human capital, social capital, cultural capital and identity capital. However, many students feel inadequately prepared in terms of psychological capital and their ability to deal with the expected challenges of the workplace such as stress, long hours and the demands of a professional environment.

This study extends our knowledge of student preparation for the workplace and suggests research opportunities to better understand psychological capital development in graduates.

Greater confidence and a perception of preparedness may be increased for graduates if opportunities for psychological capital development and increased promotion of its importance are enhanced.

The results encourage a more holistic approach to employability in graduates and have relevance for all stakeholders concerned with graduate outcomes and workplace transition.

The paper presents work-readiness in the context of graduate capitals, which is broader than the traditional skills-based approach. It also focuses on student perceptions of their level of preparation for the workplace. This has enabled results which highlight psychological capital development as a key area in which students feel underprepared.

This study focuses on the question of how well young university graduates succeed – despite their family obligations – by exploiting in the labour market the potential they have gained through their education. The findings are based on a survey of university graduates throughout Switzerland and present a positive picture. Natural science and engineering graduates are the only ones for whom participation in childcare makes the transition to working life more difficult. Otherwise, starting a family and involvement in childcare generally do not represent an obstacle to participating in employment and finding a position with high requirements. However, it is relatively rare for recent graduates with children to accept trainee positions, a fact that could have a negative impact on their careers over the long term.

The 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has profoundly affected family and school life. Evidence demonstrates how pandemic-induced online learning and home confinement can influence family dynamics and, consequently, students’ mental health and quality of life. This chapter extends the literature by building upon the perspective of family systems theory and focusing the analysis on graduate students who are underrepresented in COVID-19 research. Drawing from an online survey among 337 graduate students enrolled in a state university in the Philippines during the second year of the pandemic, this study examines the three family relationship domains (cohesion, expressiveness, and conflict), their predictive relationships with life satisfaction, and the mediating role of mental well-being on these relationships. Findings indicate favorable levels of cohesion, expressiveness, and conflict in the family. Respondents’ age, sex assigned at birth, and marital status were significantly correlated with at least one domain of family relationship. Cohesion and expressiveness yielded significant positive predictive relationships on mental well-being and life satisfaction. Furthermore, findings indicate the partial mediation of mental well-being on the relationship between cohesion and life satisfaction and full mediation on expressiveness and life satisfaction.

Following approaches consistent with the qualitative research tradition, attempts to capture the essence of the full‐time graduate student experience. Using the constant comparative method, analyzes several sources of data to arrive at a grounded theoretical model of the graduate student experience. Findings suggest that stress is at the core of the graduate student experience and is amplified by conflicting demands and internal conflict unique to this type of student. Additionally, international graduate students appear to face some tremendous obstacles that span both their personal and professional lives. Also identified are several of the tactics and mechanisms that students adopt to reduce hardship as they proceed through their respective programs. Finally, implications for current administrative practice and future research are discussed.

Individuals’ daily leisure activities undertaken close to home often appear in tourism contexts when individuals are away from home. Previous studies have suggested that such leisure-tourism connection behaviors are enhanced by leisure involvement and leisure habits. However, few studies have examined if such a connection may have variations by life stage and gender. Therefore, this study aims to examine the roles of life stage and gender in consistency between leisure and tourism, in consideration of involvement and habit. The study samples were university graduates (n = 681) who had graduated from a university in the United States and were currently working and university students (n = 706) who were enrolled and taking classes at a university in the United States.

Data were analyzed using descriptive analysis, exploratory factor analysis, t-test, two-way ANOVA and multiple regression analysis.

The findings revealed differences in the effects of leisure involvement and habit factors on the leisure-tourism connection behaviors by life stage and gender. More details are presented in this paper.

This study is the first study to examine the leisure-tourism connection behaviors in consideration of life stage and gender.

The unending ambivalence in the academic environment and the job market is detrimental to management graduates' wellbeing. The study looks into the possible intervening methods to enhance the wellbeing of students during difficult times. The study proposes spirituality development as means through which psychological resources like perceived employability and psychological capital are developed in an individual. This study also tries to identify how spirituality development leads to life wellbeing among management students.

Cross-sectional study was conducted among 212 management students from Kerala, India. Multi-stage random sampling was used to collect data. Structural equation modelling using IBM-AMOS was done to gain insights into the proposed relationships.

The results indicated that spirituality had a significant impact on the wellbeing of management students. Both perceived employability and psychological capital mediated the relationship between spirituality and life wellbeing.

The positive impact of developing spirituality among students is discussed in the paper with the theoretical underpinning of broaden and build theory. The findings suggest that colleges should try to make their campus climate more supportive of students' non-academic needs and open them to a spiritual environment especially during these challenging times.

The study is one of the first attempts to discern how spirituality development leads to an accumulation of psychological resources and life wellbeing among management graduates'.

According to national statistics, small numbers of black American women earn science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) degrees. Instead of focusing on this disturbing, well-documented trend, this chapter explores STEM career success among black female graduate students who enroll in and complete PhD programs. In other words, we are engaged in an effort to address how black women in STEM fields succeed in graduate school. This chapter presents a qualitative look at successful PhD pathways. It will provide data on the pipeline of black women at the high school, undergraduate, and graduate levels; describe programs that the state of Maryland has employed among its public research universities to recruit and retain black women in doctoral programs; present testimonials from black women who have participated in these programs; and offer an extensive case study of 15 black women alumni of these programs who now have PhDs and are establishing their STEM careers. Programs that will be documented as successful for recruiting, mentoring, and retaining black women in STEM include the National Science Foundation's (NSF) University System of Maryland Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation Bridge to the Doctorate program; the NSF's PROMISE: Maryland's Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) program for UMBC, the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB), and the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP); the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Meyerhoff Graduate Fellows Program in the Biomedical Sciences (Minority Biomedical Research Support – Initiative for Maximizing Student Development (MBRS-IMSD)) at UMBC and UMB; and subprograms such as the Dissertation House (DH), the Community Building Retreat, and the PROF-it: Professors-in-Training program. The case study will include the following questions: What were some of the obstacles that occurred during graduate school, and what helped you to overcome them? Were there any issues that occurred that made you want to quit? If you stopped for a while, or thought about stopping, what were your motivations for returning? Where did you receive mentoring during your graduate school process? What advice would you give to young women who are just starting? The chapter focuses on a variety of methods and practices that successfully shepherd black women from undergraduate ranks to PhD-level careers in STEM fields.

The first of two articles reporting the findings of a qualitative research project investigating good practice in recruiting, training and retaining new graduates. The research took place in 15 UK public and private sector organizations including the NHS in Scotland, KPMG Peak Marwick, GKN, Sema and Girobank. Highlights the key issues involved in the transition from academia to working life. The first few days and months of a job can make a lasting impact on a graduate′s perception of the organization and their commitment to it. It is crucial for both graduate and organization to make a good start to their relationship, to live up to the messages communicated in the recruitment process. Highlights examples gained from a wide variety of organizations.

A holistic approach has been applied to teaching the whole student, yet rarely emphasized in faculty development in higher education. Similarly, learner-centered instruction has become more prevalent in higher education as a way of teaching students, but less so as a concept for faculty pedagogy. This chapter examines the psychological underpinnings of holistic, learner-centered instruction and describes strategies and materials for applying these principles to faculty development so that higher education environments are humanized for culturally diverse faculty and students. Conceptual frameworks underlying the approaches emphasize humanistic theories and the needs of adult learners. Topics addressed include: motivation, cooperative learning, culturally responsive teaching, active learning, metacognition, teaching for transfer, nonverbal communication and instructional technology. Faculty development efforts described include both interdisciplinary activities and a special project with the School of Engineering. While modeling holistic, learner-centered teaching in faculty development, university instructors are engaged in their own learning of effective pedagogy and their experiences and knowledge can be used subsequently to enhance student success in their courses.

A holistic, learner-centered approach enables higher education faculty to create stimulating, nurturing, safe and respectful classroom environments which promote student engagement, content mastery, cognitive skill development, intrinsic motivation and attitudes which foster thinking and learning. Consequently, this chapter provides faculty, administrators and policymakers with tools that can be used to help students, especially at graduate and post-graduate levels, learn academic material and become enlightened global citizens with enhanced thinking abilities and affect to meet current and future personal, professional and societal needs.

Program evaluation stands as an evidence-based process that would allow institutions to document and improve the quality of graduate programs and determine how to respond to growing calls for aligning training models to economic realities. This paper aims to present the current state of evaluation in research-based doctoral programs in STEM fields.

To highlight the recent evaluative processes, the authors restricted the initial literature search to papers published in English between 2008 and 2019. As the authors were motivated by the shift at NIH, this review focuses on STEM programs, though papers on broader evaluation efforts were included as long as STEM-specific results could be identified. In total, 137 papers were included in the final review.

Only nine papers presented an evaluation of a full program. Instead, papers focused on evaluating individual components of a graduate program, testing small interventions or examining existing national data sets. The review did not find any documents that focused on the continual monitoring of training quality.

This review can serve as a resource, encourage transparency and provide motivation for faculty and administrators to gather and use assessment data to improve training models. By understanding how existing evaluations are conducted and implemented, administrators can apply evidence-based methodologies to ensure the highest quality training to best prepare students.