"VET partnerships powering a dynamic workforce" is the theme for the 33rd National Vocational Education and Training (VET) Research Conference 'No Frills.' In keeping with the conference's theme, this discussion paper focuses on Australia's workforce demands and the importance of equipping the workforce with necessary skills through…

Providing students with verifiable 21st-century skills and competencies has become increasingly more challenging for Higher Education Institutions (HEI). This study sought to investigate why institutional data from a college in the northeast reported lower levels of acquiring job- or work-related skills compared to other colleges in the system's…

This research examines regional skill problems and the strategies adopted to reduce skill shortages by a set of employers (n = 16). The data collected in 2019 in a northern region in Portugal indicate considerable and persistent shortages of engineering and IT graduates and non-graduates for operational jobs. The employers implement anticipative…

Does higher education--particularly the public and private nonprofit bachelor's degree--granting sector that has faced the greatest skepticism of late--respond more broadly to shifts in demand for certain types of skills and fields of study? The authors investigate how degree production and course-taking at U.S. undergraduate programs respond to…

We analyse labour demand and mismatch for educational traits in information and communication technology (ICT) occupations, taking into account the areas of education, occupations and skills in demand, and the supply of labour. We based our analysis on almost 40 million online job offers and a CAWI survey of people aged 18-65 in Poland. The…

This study investigates the long-standing employability gap among Tunisian civil engineering graduates, where mismatching between university education and construction industry demands irks labor market readiness. Through a mixed-methods approach, entailing semi-structured interviews with 25 industry leaders and action research within a leading…

The mass unemployment of the youth toady has mostly been attributed to the irrelevance of the school curriculum. However, the skills in the curriculum have not been subjected to critical analysis to empirically prove their relevance or otherwise. The purpose of the study was therefore to identify the skills embedded in the curriculum, those skills…

The 2020 EUA Learning & Teaching Thematic Peer Group on "Meeting skills and employability demands" explored how universities can ensure that their study programmes reflect the dynamic demands of society and the labour market, and address skills demands throughout the student experience. In this paper, employability is considered as…

What if the core curriculum for graduate students in music performance were designed to prepare students to succeed in the world of the Fourth Industrial Revolution? This dissertation offers a hypothetical answer: a structured and systematic academic curricular framework for music graduate students of performance of concert music (especially those…

In November 2018 the European Training Foundation (ETF) launched an international reflection to investigate how global trends impact developing and transition economies and to discuss what actions need to be taken to prepare people for a changing world and manage their transitions towards uncertain futures. This study on the future of skills in…

The main goal of the secondary vocational education system is to fulfill the staffing needs of the Russian economy. The only way that we can effectively deliver on this objective is by ensuring there is a well-coordinated and stable system in place that allows vocational schools to cooperate with businesses. This article reviews how this…

The UK labour market is subject to significant graduatisation. Yet in the context of an over-supply of graduates, little is known about the "demand" for and "deployment" of graduate skills in previously non-graduate jobs. Moreover, there is little examination of where these skills are developed, save an assumption in higher…

Information technology (IT) and computing are growing fields, offering far more job opportunities than applicants. Yet, little data are available to indicate how course content, employer needs, and additional learning opportunities work together the prepare graduates to enter the IT workforce. To understand the extent to which learners were…

Recent decades have seen a massive expansion in higher education (HE), fuelled by high expectations about its private benefits. This has raised concerns about the impact on the employability of recent graduates and the potential mismatches between their skills and the competences required by the job structure. Equally, it could set the ground for…

This report identifies effective strategies to tackle skills imbalances in the United Kingdom. It provides an assessment of practices and policies in the following areas: the collection and use of information on skill needs to foster a better alignment between skills acquisition and labour market needs; education and training policies targeting…