Abstract:

This paper investigates barriers affecting the university students’ employability. There are a lot of barriers that hinder student employability. The study will identify those that are pertinent to the topic. The crucial one is the lack of or ineffective work integrated learning (WIL). The lack of workplace knowledge and experience is critical to university students, lack of efficient leadership, lack of work-readiness, lack of altruists and lack of proactiveness. It is vital to note that student exposure to real life at the workplace enhances their learning and increases their employability. It enables them to bridge a gap between theory and practice. Students with no experience of organisational knowledge fail to contextualise what they learn from school. Consequently, they tend to suffer from entry shock when they discover that organisational life is different from what they expected. Hence, students who underwent WIL are more preferable to employers than their counterparts because they minimise unnecessary recruitment and training costs. The study aims to identify and assess barriers to university students’ employability in order to propose effective initiatives that will enhance students’ work-readiness and employability. The question at the heart of this research is: How and to what extent employability barriers affect students? Researchers have written some work on student employability and WIL. However, identifying barriers to employability needs further investigation. This paper contributes to the debate of student employability and WIL implementation. The constructivist research paradigm underpins the study leading to qualitative route. The instrument used for data collection is the action research. Relevant theory will explain the phenomenon.

Keywords:

Student employability, barriers, work-readiness & workplace knowledge.