Abstract:

Empowering higher education students with transversal competencies and preparing them to the labor market has been a growing concern of the entities with responsibility in education. The transversal competencies are an essential part of the professional and training profile of most degrees, and they have been defined as generic aspects related to knowledge, skills, and capabilities that any graduate must have achieved to improve his transition and integration in the professional life. The development of transversal competences should take into account the state of the art requirements from relevant industries. The topic is in the agendas and debate for public policies about the future of work and qualifications, being a generalized concern for educators, employers and students.

This article presents the results of an exploratory study focusing on development of a measurement scale to support the assessment of transversal competences. The purpose is to contribute to the body of knowledge on transversal competences, developing actionable tools that can inform the development of education and training responses to meet the demands of job market and young graduates. The development of the proposed scale builds on several sources of information, including:
i) academic literature, notably on the topics of the competencies needed for labour market transition and integration of young graduates;
ii) public available information about existing training programs for the development of competencies for supporting job search;
iii) public available information about existing job offers and the most required competences;
iv) interviews with employers from representative industries and related human resources services.

The development of the scale was conducted within the scope of the ActYouth-EU project and involved data collection in four European Countries: Cyprus, Poland, Portugal and Lithuania. The proposed instrument is composed by 21 transversal competences, covering personal and generic dimensions, such as: Adaptability, Commercial Awareness, Attention to Detail, Communication, Proactivity, Costumer orientation, Passion, Foreign languages, Integrity, Multi-tasking, Social relations, Conflict management, Self-awareness, Smart thinking, Autonomy, Critical thinking, Time management, Engagement, Tolerance to stress, ICT and Personal Development.

The scale development followed prevalent academic methodologic guidelines, including:
i) item development and content validity;
ii) pilot application of the scale, in the four countries of the study;
iii) examination of the factor structure, and analysis of internal consistency, and validity;
iv) selection of a final item list ;
v) evaluation of scale properties and replicability across different samples – students and employers.

The application of the scale also allowed for a preliminary characterization of the transversal competences’ profile of young graduates, from a pan European perspective. It informed the discussion about the priorities for of innovation in Higher Education for the qualification in those domains. The data collected revealed the existence of gaps in the perspectives of in young graduates towards employees concerning competences required from job market transition. The results offer a timely insight to inform Higher Education debates about employability challenges and the development of teaching and learning approaches for the qualification in transversal competences.

Keywords:

Competence assessment, job market transition, young graduates, transversal competences.