Barriers Facing Engineering Graduates Towards Employability

Abstract

Engineering education is part of STEM and expectations are graduates who are molded and possess 21st-century skills. Graduates are supposed to be prepared for the future workforce and be able to be employed in the outside world. The 21st-century skills assist the graduates to be able to tackle complex engineering problems. Engineering graduates from Zimbabwean universities lack 21st-century skills. Various countries are overproducing engineering graduates with no or minimal skills. As a result, engineering graduates are either under-employed or unemployed and not suitable for the labour markets. The interface between technology and the labor market is drastically changing globally and this then demands new skills for graduate engineers. Nowadays employers are actually searching for graduates who possess 21st-century skills like creativity, learning skills, reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making. The chapter seeks to: give an overview of the challenges faced by graduate engineering students toward employment opportunities; for enhancing engineering graduate employability.