The working paper on Skills Development and Perceptions from the Futuretrack project is now up online! This paper looks at final year undergraduate students’ perceptions of the skills they have to offer and the skills they think are sought by employers.

In particular, the issues discussed are:

• Students’ beliefs about the extent to which they personally possessed key skills

• Students’ perceptions of skills developed on courses

• The main skills students considered employers seek in graduate recruits

• The extent to which students believed they had the skills and qualities that graduate employers seek

Key findings include:

• The majority of final year students rated their skills as at least adequate in all areas and most were confident of their skills and knowledge.

• Between 80 and 90 per cent of students reported that their research skills, specialist knowledge, critical analysis, and ability to apply knowledge had been developed ‘very much’ or ‘quite a lot’ as part of their course.

• Almost three quarters of final year students thought that the experience of being a student had made them more employable than they would otherwise have been, and more than 80 per cent agreed to a greater or lesser extent that the experience of being a student had enhanced their social and intellectual capabilities more broadly.

• As they approached the end of their undergraduate courses, over 80 per cent of respondents believed that they have the skills employers are likely to be looking for when recruiting for the kind of jobs they wanted to apply for.

Read the full paper here: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/futuretrack/findings/ft3.1_wp4_skills.pdf