Alexandrina Maria Pauceanu

Higher Colleges of Technology, Sharjah, UAE 

E-mail: apauceanu@hct.ac.ae

ORCID 0000-0001-7412-4813

Employability in the fourth industrial revolution

Nada Rabie

Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, UAE 

E-mail: nada.rabie@zu.ac.ae

ORCID 0000-0003-1226-1251

Ayman Moustafa

British University in Dubai, Dubai, UAE 

E-mail: amoustafa@hct.ac.ae

ORCID 0000-0002-2938-5843

Abstract. It is expected that the fourth industrial revolution will have a massive impact on individual career future experience by changing the basis of work, employment, and business in the upcoming future. Moreover, one-third of today’s jobs will disappear by 2025 due to technology’s intelligence development. Thus, students’ employability skills are considered an effective tool to sustain employment at the future labour market. However, there are discrepancies in employability skills vision between higher education students’ perspectives and those of employers. This study aims to recognize higher education students’ perspectives about employability skills and to compare them with the labour market employability skills as requested by employers. A questionnaire was designed to test graduate students’ perspectives on employability using the WEF 2020 employability skills. The results show that students are not fully aware of the fourth industrial revolution employability skills, thus, there is a gap between future labour market demand and students’ perspectives about future employability skills. This study is testing employability in its two aspects. Firstly, the UAE graduate students’ perspective of the employability skills as required by employers. Secondly, testing students’ evaluation of the university educational programs’ readiness in preparing them for the job market.

Received: December, 2019

1st Revision: June, 2020

Accepted: September, 2020

DOI: 10.14254/2071-789X.2020/13-3/17

JEL Classification: J62, J23

Keywords: employability, the fourth industrial revolution, higher education, UAE