Employability development in undergraduate programmes: how different is liberal arts education?

Milan Kovačević*, Teun Dekker, Rolf van der Velden

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

This paper examines how students’ employability develops during undergraduate studies at a Dutch liberal arts college compared to a conventional bachelor’s programme in law at the same university. Drawing on the graduate capital model, the study focuses on six skills that enhance employability: creativity, lifelong learning, career decidedness, self-efficacy, resilience, and personal initiative. To measure employability growth, a cross-sectional pseudo-cohort research design is adopted, comparing first-, second-, and third-year student cohorts. The results show that liberal arts students make significant progress in five out of the six examined employability-related skills. Compared to the conventional programme, the gains in creativity and personal initiative particularly stand out, reflecting the differences between interdisciplinary and monodisciplinary learning, and self-tailored and fixed curriculum structures. This refutes the stereotype that a liberal arts degree does not prepare students for the labour market and points to the relevance of programme-specific features for employability development in higher education.
Original languageEnglish
Number of pages21
JournalTeaching in Higher Education
Early online dateMay 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 23 May 2023

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