Mechanical Engineering Students’ Employability Skills at Malaysian Vocational Colleges

摘要

Globalization process that occurs in the engineering industry promotes the growth of technology and transforms the nature of workers. Thus, graduates who are involved in the industry need individual skills to adapt to the major changes in terms of knowledge, tools, systems, and management.Therefore, education in Malaysia should emphasize the element of employability in students’ educational process. This study was designed to investigate the level of competency in regards to employability skills among Malaysian vocational college students. Quantitative research designwas utilized in carrying out this study. Five hundred and sixty six (566) mechanical engineering program students and seventy five (75) mechanical engineering program lecturers from Vocational Colleges in southern states of Malaysia responded to a set of questionnaires. The findings of thestudy show that the level of employability skills among the students at moderate level. The results showed that students lack employability skills in term of communication skills, knowledge of contemporary issues, problem solving and decision making skills. Thus, it is recommended for institutionsto train new lecturers on how to teach career and employability skills in vocational colleges. Besides, there should be continuous monitoring process on teaching methods applied by lecturers in order to ensure their suitability in order to support the students’ acquisitioning of employabilityskills. In addition, it is also recommended for lecturers to have collaboration with industry, which is related to mechanical engineering program in order to gather current feedback with regard to Malaysia Vocational College graduates performance in employability skills and the current industryskills demand.