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This paper explores the attractiveness of TVET in Sierra Leone, a post-conflict West African country. It aims to unpack structural factors which contribute to the low repute of TVET.

The paper uses qualitative interviews with employers, government and third sector organisations, focus group discussions with young Sierra Leoneans and analysis of key government policy documents. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data, and the empirical analysis is grounded in Social Learning Theory of Career Decision Making and Social Cognitive Career Theory. The paper is interdisciplinary, drawing on literature from economics, psychology, political science and development studies.

The paper argues that TVET is in low repute in Sierra Leone owing to low prioritisation by the national government in terms of policy focus, budgetary allocations and provision of training facilities; the proliferation and continuation of a post-war style of TVET programmes by development partners which initially targeted ex-combatants and thus carry reputational baggage; and colonial legacies of preferences for university education and white-collar jobs.

The research contributes to the academic and policy discourse by providing new empirical insights from an under-studied country (and region), and arguably one where evidence-based policy is much needed.

The purpose of this paper is to use Bourdieu’s Theory of Capital–Field–Habitus to explore how refugees, asylum seekers and migrants accumulate and mobilise social, cultural, symbolic and economic capital to find meaningful work in the Australian construction industry.

The paper reports the results of a survey of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants who have either successfully or unsuccessfully searched for employment in the Australian construction industry.

The findings dispel widely held negative stereotypes of about this group by describing a highly capable workforce which could address significant skills shortages in the industry, while concurrently diversifying the workforce. However, it is found that refugees, asylum seekers and migrants face considerable barriers to finding meaningful employment in the construction industry. In circumventing these barriers, education institutions, charities and community-based organisations play an especially important role, alongside friends and family networks. They do this by helping refugees, asylum seekers and migrants accumulate and deploy the necessary capital to secure meaningful work in the construction industry. Disappointingly, it is also found that the construction industry does little to help facilitate capital accumulation and deployment for this group, despite the urgent need to address diversity and critical skills shortages.

Employing Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Capital–Field–Habitus, the findings make a number of new theoretical and practical contributions to the limited body of international research relating to the employment of refugees, asylum seekers and migrant workers in the construction. The results are important because meaningful employment is widely accepted to be the single most factor in the successful integration of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants into a host society and the construction industry represents an important source of potential employment for them.

We aimed to identify factors that influence student engagement in distance learning.

The research involved a group of 671 students from economic and technical higher education institutions in Poland. We collected the data with the CAWI technique and an original survey. Next, we processed the data using principal component analysis and then used the extracted components as predictors in the induced smoothing LASSO regression model.

The components of the students’ attitude toward remote classes learning conditions are: satisfaction with teachers’ approach, attitude to distance learning, the system of students’ values and motivation, IT infrastructure of the university, building a network of contacts and communication skills. The final model consisted of seven statistically significant variables, encompassing the student’s sex, level of studies and the first five extracted PCs. Student’s system of values and motivation as well as attitude toward distance learning, were those variables that had the biggest influence on student engagement.

The research result suggests that in addition to students’ system of values and motivation and their attitude toward distance learning, the satisfaction level of teachers’ attitude is one of the three most important factors that influence student engagement during the distance learning process.

The main value of this article is the statistical model of student engagement during distance learning. The article fills the research gap in identifying and evaluating the impact of various factors determining student engagement in the distance learning process.

At this moment, there is substantial anxiety surrounding the fire safety of huge reinforced concrete (RC) constructions. The limitations enforced by test facilities, technology, and high costs have significantly limited both full-scale and scaled-down structural fire experiments. The behavior of an individual structural component can have an impact on the entire structural system when it is connected to it. This paper addresses the development and testing of a self-straining preloading setup that is used to perform thermomechanical action in RC beams and slabs.

Thermomechanical action is a combination of both structural loads and a high-temperature effect. Buildings undergo thermomechanical action when it is exposed to fire. RC beams and slabs are one of the predominant structural members. The conventional method of testing the beams and slabs under high temperatures will be performed by heating the specimens separately under the desired temperature, and then mechanical loading will be performed. This gives the residual strength of the beams and slabs under high temperatures. This method does not show the real-time behavior of the element under fire. In real-time, a fire occurs simultaneously when the structure is subjected to desired loads and this condition is called thermomechanical action. To satisfy this condition, a unique self-training test setup was prepared. The setup is based on the concept of a prestressing condition where the load is applied through the bolts.

To validate the test setup, two RC beams and slabs were used. The test setup was tested in service load range and a temperature of 300 °C. One of the beams and slabs was tested conventionally with four-point bending and point loading on the slab, and another beam and slab were tested using the preloading setup. The results indicate the successful operation of the developed self-strain preloading setup under thermomechanical action.

Gaining insight into the unpredictable reaction of structural systems to fire is crucial for designing resilient structures that can withstand disasters. However, comprehending the instantaneous behavior might be a daunting undertaking as it necessitates extensive testing resources. Therefore, a thorough quantitative and qualitative numerical analysis could effectively evaluate the significance of this research.

The study was performed to validate the thermomechanical load setup for beams and slabs on a single-bay single-storey RC frame with and without slab under various fire possible scenarios. The thermomechanical load setup for RC members is found to be scarce.

This study aims at exploring the role of higher education service quality in affecting students' psychological well-being through the lens of the sustainable development goals. This purpose is achieved through investigating the effects of functional and technical service quality dimensions on six psychological well-being dimensions, namely, environmental mastery, autonomy, self-acceptance, positive relationships with others, personal growth and purpose in life.

Using a survey, data were collected from 453 Egyptian students. The hypotheses are tested using structural equation modeling via SmartPLS 4. The study's limitations are the inability to use probability sampling techniques and length of the survey that led to low response rates.

The results show that functional service quality is positively associated with students' autonomy, positive relationships with others and self-acceptance, while functional service was found insignificant in affecting environmental mastery or self-acceptance. Further, positive results are found in the relationship between technical service quality and students' environmental mastery and self-acceptance. On the other hand, a negative relationship is detected between technical service quality and students' personal growth. Lastly, technical service quality is found to be insignificant in affecting students' autonomy or personal relationships with others.

This study responds to calls for more studies investigating how service quality can shape and affect customer well-being. Furthermore, this is the first study to investigate the different roles played by functional and technical service quality in affecting six psychological well-being dimensions of higher education students. Drawing on a sample of 453 Egyptian students, this study provides a novel contribution about the Egyptian higher education context, which is both understudied in the service literature and the well-being literature.

The current study intends to synthesise the prior studies on employability skills among work-ready professionals in higher education through bibliometric and network visualisation tools. This study also identifies the gaps in the existing literature that still need to be filled and maps the course for future investigation.

The current study examined research papers on employability skills among work-ready professionals in higher education to evaluate global patterns and the top authors, institutions, journals, and nations contributing to this field. The authors analysed eight hundred eighty-five papers from the Scopus database between 1982 and 2023 for the study. Open-source bibliometric tools like Biblioshiny were used in the study to examine the body of literature and to spot new directions for future research.

The study’s findings indicate that since 2008, researchers, academics, and policymakers have paid more attention to employability skills among work-ready professionals, and 2019 is the year seeing the highest no. of publications. Across the globe, 2077 authors contributed to the articles, papers, and journals published in the particular domain. Regarding location, the United Kingdom is the world’s most productive nation, with 342 articles produced. Similarly, Australia, India, and Malaysia are the leading nations that have contributed to the field. Both keywords significantly contribute to scientific knowledge.

The gaps in this study will serve as a reference point for researchers conducting future studies in this field. Additionally, the result of this analysis offers a roadmap for higher education to enhance graduate employability by embedding necessary skills into them.

There has not been a bibliometric analysis concerning employability skills among Work-ready professionals in the existing literature; hence, this article is innovative. This study is the first attempt at integrating the concept. The study also gives an overview of potential directions for future research in this discipline.

Social engineering is crucial in today’s digital landscape. As technology advances, malicious individuals exploit human judgment and trust. This study explores how age, education and occupation affect individuals’ awareness, skills and perceptions of social engineering.

A quantitative research approach was used to survey a diverse demographic of Egyptian society. The survey was conducted in February 2023, and the participants were sourced from various Egyptian social media pages covering different topics. The collected data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics, including independent samples t-test and ANOVA, to compare awareness and skills across different groups.

The study revealed that younger individuals and those with higher education tend to research social engineering more frequently. Males display a higher level of awareness but score lower in terms of social and psychological consequences as well as types of attacks when compared to females. The type of attack cannot be predicted based on age. Higher education is linked to greater awareness and ability to defend against attacks. Different occupations have varying levels of awareness, skills, and psychosocial consequences. The study emphasizes the importance of increasing awareness, education and implementing cybersecurity measures.

This study’s originality lies in its focus on diverse Egyptian demographics, innovative recruitment via social media, comprehensive exploration of variables, statistical rigor, practical insights for cybersecurity education and diversity in educational and occupational backgrounds.

Considering the critical role of higher education institutions in the advancement of the 2030 Agenda, this paper aims to analyse the incorporation of the gender perspective (Sustainable Development Goal 5) in the University Cooperation for International Development.

Following a qualitative methodological strategy, this paper identifies the potentialities and challenges of this perspective from the point of view of the technical staff of the cooperation units of seven Spanish universities.

Results show a strong intention to incorporate gender principles, in accordance with the SDGs framework. However, the findings also point to certain divergences in the forms of understanding and implementing gender equality in practice. Finally, this paper uncovers a variety of strategies to navigate the resistances, still existing in the university community.

Spain is orienting the legal framework of its cooperation and international relations towards the ambitious horizon of a feminist foreign policy. Universities are key actors in international development cooperation and the implementation of the SDGs. This is an issue that has received little research attention, particularly from a gender perspective.

Within the umbrella of technology and vocational education (TVET), technology or technical education in higher institutions of learning is obligated to produce the required manpower needed in the industry. Thus, it is pertinent to explore the interaction between the industry and higher education students. Drawing on the tenets of theory of planned behavior (TPB), this study offers valuable insights into the nomological networks of work-integrated learning (WIL), perceived behavioral control (PBC), subjective norm (SBN), personal attitude (PAT) and job search intention (JSI).

The study applied a structurally hypothesized model that was drawn from the TPB to collect data for the constructs. Using a cross-sectional survey after the WIL experiences of the students, we collected data from technology education undergraduates (N = 214) in their final academic year from universities in Nigeria.

With structural equation modeling, the study found that WIL is directly associated with JSI, PBC, SBN and PAT. In line with the tenets of the TPB, simple mediation models were supported about the influence of WIL on JSI via PBC and PAT discretely but not via SBN. Further, the results support two paths of serial mediation models, indicating sequential indirect links between WIL and JSI via SBN and PBC, as well as via SBN and PAT.

Our findings have implications for higher education practitioners, industry experts and employers of labor.

Although extant literature has relatively shown that WIL impacts employability skills, this study has remarkably shown the WIL-JSI nexuses within the variables of TPB.

There is evidence of country-level contextual variations regarding the benefits of practical experience acquired by students during higher education. This paper, therefore, analyses the benefits of student internships in the Ghanaian context.

In Study 1, two structured but distinct surveys were distributed to senior members and students of six specialised technical education institutions (TIs). Study 2 involved in-depth interviews with the heads of organisations in the tertiary education sector, including trade groups, industries and government agencies.

Internship provides soft skills, confidence, career development, sense of responsibility, employability, income, knowledge sharing and networking for students/interns. For TIs, it contributes to the professional development of faculty supervisors and helps them to update the content they teach. For employers, it unveils talented and promising students who can be employed immediately after graduation at a relatively cheaper cost.

There is still the need for additional research in different contexts: both developed and developing economies to clear doubts on the controversies surrounding the relevance of internship in the 21st century.

TIs should continue to champion student internship programmes. This study highlights the need for employers to place internship students in areas that relate to their fields of study. It also underscores the need for students to embrace internship since it is the cornerstone to their employability in the labour market.

Undeniably, student internships provide a critical platform for career beginners.

This paper contributes to knowledge by offering contextual literature in Ghana on the benefits of student internship programme for interns/students, TIs and employers, all together.