Soft Skills and Graduate Employability: Evidence from Malaysian Tracer Study

Abstract

Recent trends in graduate employment have raised concerns among higher education providers and other stakeholders. Issues concerning the soft skills gap have been constantly raised so that industries and universities can adopt various initiatives to address this situation. In addition, employment has shifted from production to service, increasing the importance of soft skills. This study aims to map graduates’ soft skills and employment status after graduation. The Ministry of Higher Education repository was used to select 100,413 first-degree graduates who had completed their studies. Logistic regression analysis created the graduate employability predictive model, which yielded a 77% accuracy. The findings show that 85.5% of graduates were employed during data collection. The predictive model suggests that graduate employability status is affected by factors such as gender, family income, the field of study, MUET, CGPA, internship, entrepreneurship course, working experience, communication skills, analytical skills, teamwork, positive values, and general knowledge.