Date of Award

11-2010

Thesis Type

Masters

Document Type

Dissertation

Divisions

Faculty of Business and Economics (formally known as Faculty of Business and Accountancy)

Institution

Universiti Malaya

Abstract

Employers today are generally not satisfied with the quality of fresh graduates that graduate from university.  Universities are no longer a vehicle for students to acquire academic knowledge but one to help develop life skills as well.  So what are the graduate employability skills that the industry is talking about?  This study was conducted on the students of UCSI University in Kuala Lumpur to find out the types of soft skills that are lacking amongst students and to find out what can contribute to the learning and development of such skills.  The soft skills highlighted to be studied include communication skills, leadership skills, time management and emotional intelligence.  This is the criterion variable.  These are also the skills sighted by the industry as lacking amongst fresh graduates.  This paper examines if personality, peer relationship, attitude towards school and emotional intelligence play a part in helping these students develop and sharpen their soft skills.  This is the predictor variable.  These factors are chosen because students spend more than half of their undergraduate journey in university, attending classes, learning from lecturers, making new friends and interacting with peers.  This paper seeks to find out if these factors play a role in the development of soft skills amongst students. The survey was conducted on students with a match done with their supervisors to find out if what students say about themselves match what supervisors observe through their work.  A moderating factor of culture was included in this study to find out if there is any moderating effect of power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism/collectivism and femininity/masculinity on the relationship.  Factor analysis was done on the independent variables, dependent variables and moderating variables to see the factors emerging from the questionnaire and to summarize the variables.  Then a reliability test was conducted on all the three variables to see if the measures are reliable and free from error.  Finally hierarchical regression analysis was done on all the variables to determine if there is a direct effect of the independent variable on soft skill development with a moderating effect of culture. The findings are as a guide for the university to look into introducing programmes, workshops to aid student learning and effectively embedding the graduate attributes in the current curriculum.  Interestingly, the results showed that there is a no direct correlation of the independent variables to soft skills development but there is a moderating effect of culture on the independent variables and soft skills development.

Initial

khm

Additional Information

Dissertation (M.A.) - Faculty of Business and Economics, Universiti Malaya, 2010.

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