Abstract:

There is widespread recognition that nowadays human resources development is not an exclusive responsibility of employing organizations. People individually have to assume the task of preparing themselves to the employment world, and for higher education institutions this has risen to be one of the top priorities.

This paper presents a case study of how curriculum design and delivery may support university-business communication, and consequently facilitate the development of employability skills. Employability skills are in this work conceptualised as all the technical and non-technical skills that are desirable to have in order to be proficient in a specific labour market.

Three different experiences on a higher education course are described: a project based curricula, an educational-professional network, and a curricular individual development program. With specific aims each, all the three educational strategies work complementarily as drivers for the alignment of students’ development with labour specific needs. Together these curriculum design and delivery options are based on two fundamental foundations, university-business cooperation and students´ engagement in skills’ selection and development.

Keywords:

Human Resources Development, Curriculum, Employability, Higher Education Institutions.