Work Readiness among Graduate Students

This study explored work readiness among graduate program completers at a Research University (RU/VH) in the Southeastern Region of the United States. Work readiness, although a relatively new construct, is defined as the level to which graduate students are perceived as possessing attitudes and attributes that enable them to be prepared for success in the workforce. Graduate degree-seeking students in universities and colleges are projected to surpass bachelor seeking students in the future. Hiring of graduate degree holders by organizations, however, play a major role in recruitment of new employees. Increasingly, organizations report that recent graduate program completers are insufficiently prepared for the 21st century workplace. University administrators however allude to the contrary. Graduate program completers going through this transition from classroom to the workplace have been scarcely studied in terms of their perceived work readiness. This study therefore studied their perceived work readiness as well as influencing personal and academic characteristics. Data from 967 graduate program completers were used in the study. This data were collected from the Graduating Student Survey of a Research University (RU/VH) in the Southeastern Region of the United States. The data measured perceived work readiness of graduate program completers for each graduating semester in 2014. The selected predictors in this study included Having an Internship, Having an Assistantship, Publication Status and Participation in Conferences, Access to faculty expertise, Access to facilities, Satisfaction with career center. The predictor variables were explored to determine their significance in predicting work readiness perceptions of the graduate program completers. The results showed that graduate program completers who had an internship and an assistantship were significantly different from those who did not in terms of their perceived work readiness. In addition having access to faculty expertise, satisfaction with career center and submitting one or more journal articles for publication explained 21.6% of the variance in perceived work readiness of the graduate program completers. Other findings with discussion of the results and recommendations for future research and practice were discussed