What Have You Learned? Matching Academic Content to Employability Skills in an Economics Undergraduate Programme

In economics and social sciences in general, it is often difficult for students to connect theory with practice and identify how material that is being taught, develops discipline-specific skills, and importantly, in this context, employability (or, so called, soft) skills. This is particularly pronounced for mathematical and, generally, quantitative courses of the standard economics undergraduate curriculum. The abstract nature and broadness of both the subject-specific and generic employability skills to be gained during an economics programme, is adding to the complexity of the task. Not bridging theory with practice leads to disengagement, absenteeism, poor performance, and eventually low student satisfaction. Higher education has become almost synonymous to vocational education, and students expect to gain specific employment trajectories from their programmes of study. Universities nowadays routinely report labour market indicators (e.g., graduates in employment within certain times since graduation, average salaries of graduates etc.) and metrics for each programme of study. At the same time, employers seek graduates who possess, together with discipline specific knowledge, a broad range of skills and aptitudes ranging from good communication skills to critical, and innovative thinking, and hence universities are expected to develop students’ transferable skills, competencies, and generic attributes or capabilities (Jenkins and Lane, 2019). Clearly demonstrating how and what skills students gain through studying for an economics degree, and a university degree in general, and the practical implications of the material taught, is important