Needs Assessment of Future Work Skills for Students at Autonomus Universities

Abstract

The research article consisted of the following objectives: 1) to study the future work skills and 2) to assess the needs for future work skills for students of public autonomous universities. The study was a quantitative research. The population and sample group consisted of 1) student representatives, teacher representatives, employer representatives, and graduate representatives, in a total of 12 persons; and 2) directors, managers or supervisors operating in government agencies, state enterprises, and private companies, in a total of 379 persons. The instruments used for data collection were an interview form and questionnaire. The acquired data from an interview were analyzed by means of interpretation and summary, while the data from a questionnaire were analyzed by average, standard deviation (S.D.), and modified priority need index (PNI). The research results revealed that the future work skills consist of 7 aspects as follows: 1) the ability to understand the high-level information; 2) the out-of-the-box thinking and adaptive thinking; 3) computational thinking; 4) the understanding of new media; 5) social intelligence; 6) the understanding of different cultures; and 7) the ability to work together in a virtual environment. The most needs was the out-of-the-box thinking and adaptive thinking which was found to have a priority need index equal to 0.2020. Followed by, the understanding in new media (PNI=0.2000), social intelligence (PNI=0.1984), the ability to understand the high-level information (PNI=0.1980), computational thinking (PNI=0.1955), the understanding of different cultures (PNI=0.1886), and lastly, the ability to work together in a virtual environment (PNI=0.1879).