Bridging the Gap Between Industry and Higher Education Demands on Electronic Graduates’ Competencies

Full employment is an important objective for the nation’s economy. Unfortunately, the impacts of active short-term labour market policies implemented by the Malaysian government that focus directly on the employment appear to be limited. Therefore, this study intend to find the gap of the employed electronic engineers meeting the demands required competencies of the electronic industry and the higher education In this paper, the gap was studied in two aspects, acquired and required competencies needed by the employer as well as higher education. Qualitative semi structured interview techniques was used to get data from the respondents. A total numbers of 10 lecturers, 13 employers (3 production, testing, or quality assurance engineers, 5 technical managers and 5 training manager or human resource managers from 8 different electronics firm), 12 employed electronic graduates, and 11 unemployed electronic graduates. The results shows that managers feel that there is a mismatch of competencies. They are dissatisfied with acquired knowledge of engineers. Only a small number is well equipped. Employers pay attention to quality rather than quantity. Interviews with the lectures showed that the graduates lack soft skills. Employed graduates too feel that soft skills are important in working environment. In acquired competencies, lectures from science and other professional courses believe that close to 80% graduates are equipped to handle real work tasks compared to only 50% of graduates from social sciences and arts courses. This study suggests that the gap in required and acquired competencies should be emphasized in curriculum design.