The skills gap of Vietnamese graduates and final-year university students

Complementing existing literature about graduate skills gaps from employers’ perspectives, this article reports a study that investigated the skills gaps of Vietnamese graduates and final-year students from their own perspectives. Firstly, 257 university graduates were invited to assess the importance level of 35 skills in the workplace. These graduates and 525 final-year university students were then asked to rate their levels of these 35 skills. Data were analysed using principal component analyses, descriptive statistics, independent samples T-tests, and one-way ANOVA tests. The analyses revealed that final-year students and recent graduates were severely lacking in the skills to effectively perform their work duties. Moreover, there were statistically significant differences in the attainment of these skills between some groups of graduates, but not between groups of final-year students. This article discusses the factors that could have caused such a skills gap and suggests some implications for developing graduate skills in general.