Determining the Skills Gap for New Hires in Management

Abstract

This study is an exploratory attempt to evaluate the skills gap in the discipline of business management, based upon the perceptions of students as compared to the expectations of employers. While it has been assumed that the skills gap may be a shortcoming of higher education’s inability to understand employer needs (Everson 2014), it is expected that the gap is more a result of misaligned student interpretations of employer needs and an academic environment that increasingly views the student as the customer. If faculty consider the employer as a primary customer, then perhaps academic programs can be redesigned to provide better opportunities to new graduates.