Student Character Building: Fostering University Experience towards Employability - An Overview

Abstract

The employability of graduates is everyone’s concern. In Malaysia, the unemployment rate is serious with a number of factors contributing to the employability of graduates. Many companies prefer hiring someone competent with positive attributes and a pleasant personality rather than a highly qualified person that cannot work well with others. Therefore, it is vital for universities to produce graduates who are able to meet the challenges of the workplace and persevere on in accomplishing the task that are given to them. With this in mind the university has come up with the initiative to introduce the Student Character Building programme under the student experience framework. This effort is to create a platform to establish identity as the key developmental issue that arises for students during their time in the university. The student experience framework prepares students to be extraordinary not only academically, but also excellent in terms of their attitudes and characters in their effort to search for a satisfactory job or to be an entrepreneur in the near future. It is more convenient for employees to upgrade and improve their academic qualification, but it is very costly to improve their characters as these kinds of employees may have attitude problems that can result in low productivity and efficiency.