Exploring the Academic Paths and Professional Aspirations of GenZ STEM Students in the Canary Islands.

Autor: SIERRA, C., BOENTE, C., BAELO, R., ESTÉVEZ, L., ROSALES-ASENSIO, E.
Předmět:
Zdroj: International Journal of Engineering Education; 2024, Vol. 40 Issue 4, p815-832, 18p
Abstrakt: Characterized as the generation most comfortable with technology and social media, Generation Z (Gen-Z), people born from the mid to late 1990s into the early 2010s, are the most recent entrants to the workforce and to date their attitudes to the labor market have been under researched. This study aims to address this and to this end we gathered a corpus of Gen-Z Chemical Engineering students in the Canary Islands (Spain) and used a questionnaire to interrogate their attitudes and perceptions towards continuing education, their employability and future job prospects. An educational system that best prepares students for current market needs not only benefits industry but also students' perception of their own employability. The motivation for this work then, lies in the extensive research identifying a potential gap between graduates' skills set and the requirements of various industries. Our findings underscore the significance of fostering students' soft skills, an aspect of education poorly addressed by traditional teaching methods. Additionally, our data indicates that good social networks significantly improve students' resilience and increase levels of optimism concerning their future career opportunities. These findings have far-reaching implications for the development of educational strategies and recruitment approaches that will more effectively integrate graduates into the evolving workforce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Databáze: Supplemental Index