Increasing Student Employability through University/Industry Collaboration: A study in South Africa, the UK and Finland

Due to its high youth unemployment the study focused on South Africa but covered selected universities in the UK and Finland for the purposes of comparison and benchmarking. The purpose of the study was to determine the perceptions of industry, lecturers and students on the competencies gained at university and the benefits of university enterprise collaboration (UEC) to students. Data was collected through mixed methods: a structured survey and semi-structured interviews. UEC is shown to increase student employability and work-readiness but several challenges to implementing such collaboration exist, particularly in South Africa. Based on the results the paper proposes that technology can be used to overcome the gaps in achieving effective UEC and thereby increasing the employability of students in South Africa