Graduate employability has become increasingly contentious as employers call for greater development, evaluation and benchmarking of student skills and capabilities in university courses. However, the increasing range of graduate attributes and competencies demanded by industry is further pressuring an Australian higher education sector already stretched by greater student numbers and declines in government funding. Given these circumstances, there is a need to better understand employer perspectives of the current and future value of vocational, interpersonal and generic attributes of STEM graduates. A survey of STEM graduate employers showed that vocational skills, such as graduates' abilities to contextually apply and develop knowledge, together with generic skills such as critical thinking and problem solving, were valued most highly. Conversely, self-confidence and independence, along with numeracy and related skills, were valued least by the employers. However, attributes such as flexibility / adaptability, self-confidence, personal planning and organisation and developing knowledge relevant to the position were all predicted to become significantly more valuable in a decade's time. The results of this study suggest that Australian undergraduate STEM curricula, which commonly focus on knowledge acquisition, be redesigned and restructured to provide students with opportunities to apply such knowledge more often, and in real life, industry-based contexts, such as WIL and IBL programs. Through such initiatives, together with greater dialogue and collaboration between academics and employers, employability skills and attributes can be better inculcated in undergraduates, to the benefit of graduates and society as a whole.

Graduate employability is a key issue for higher education as new graduates face a highly competitive and rapidly changing employment sector. To maximise their likelihood of employment, graduates need to be able to demonstrate the skills and attributes most valued by employers. Employers, however, have long criticised the ability of graduates to contribute effectively to the workplace, especially due to a perceived lack of generic employability skills. This indicates a possible mismatch between the skills required by employers and those possessed by graduate applicants. This study addresses a gap in the scholarly literature regarding employability skills – the perspectives of science academics at an Australian and UK university regarding the promotion of generic employability skills in the subjects they teach. More specifically, this article discusses academics’ perspectives regarding: (a) which of the targeted generic skills were developed and assessed through their science units, and (b) the approaches used to promote the targeted skills and any associated challenges in employing those approaches. The discussion explores how shifting from traditional transmissive pedagogies to more problem-based approaches and embedding reflection into pedagogy and assessment practices would contribute to promoting the skills employers increasingly demand from science graduates.

This study investigated the interrelationships among university entrance score, career aspiration, academic major, and academic achievement, of foundation year students, at an overall level and at completion of each year level of a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree. Self-determination theory (SDT) was used as the underlying model for this study, which comprised 157 students who had completed their degree over 2015–2017. Results were analysed in terms of students’ intrinsic motivations (career aspiration and academic major), extrinsic motivations (university entrance score and academic success) and an amotivational factor (gender). We propose a model to explain the observed change in importance between BSc students’ extrinsic and intrinsic motivations, as a function of time and their increasing autonomy. If our results reflect broader patterns among Australian students undertaking post-secondary education, the use of grounded SDT-based approaches during foundation year may allow students to make more informed choices of academic major, and through this enhance their academic achievement.

Student engagement at university is significantly influenced by sense of belonging. In 2013, our university developed a novel extra-curricular program designed to foster a sense of belonging in students who commute to university – the Monash Non-Residential Colleges (NRC) program. This study examines whether participation in the Monash NRC program changed students’ perceptions about their university experience and their sense of belonging to the university community. We show that our NRC program appears to be effective in fostering a more positive university experience for students when compared with non-NRC students. Additionally, we demonstrate that our NRC program influenced students’ sense of belonging through increased interaction with peers and staff as well as greater reported attendance on campus.

The internationalisation of higher education generates several issues related to quality, uniformity of subjects taught across campuses and the role of differences in English-speaking ability, which may affect student learning and skills development. This study used a self-assessment survey framework to investigate Australian (native English speaking) and Malaysian (non-native English speaking) students’ perceptions of their writing-related competencies. These perceptions were then correlated with students’ grades for specific writing tasks at the Australian and Malaysian campuses of Monash University, a research-intensive tertiary institution. Student perceptions of six competencies were determined upon commencement and completion of a core science subject, SCI2010. Australian and Malaysian student perceptions of their abilities improved for all six, and four of the surveyed competencies, respectively. Upon commencement of the science unit, Malaysian students’ self-efficacy was higher than that of Australian students for three competencies. However, by completion, Australian students had higher self-efficacy for all six competencies, which correlated with their higher literature review grades. There was no difference in grades for the annotated bibliography assignment. These results have important implications for the delivery of university subjects across international campuses.