Dr. Mark TSANG, Assistant Professor

Project Title: The importance of General Education: An estimate of the proportion of graduates holding jobs related to their major of studies

Start Date: Aug 2014

Source of Funding: School Research Grant

Funding Period: 1 year

Brief Project Description by Principal Investigator:

Previous studies revealed that a lot of graduates have jobs unrelated to their major of studies. Employers rated transferrable skills like languages, critical thinking, problem solving and communication as important attributes for workplaces. General Education, therefore, is designed to provide trainings of these generic skills to students, supplementing teaching in one specific discipline. In order to highlight the significance of General Education, this research tries to answer the following questions. First, what is the percentage of graduates holding jobs related to their major of studies in Hong Kong? Second, is there any difference in major-job relevancy across different majors, occupations, industries, education levels, locations of degrees, income levels, and genders? Third, what are the most important skills for different groups of employees in Hong Kong?

Students, or even educators, tend to put more emphasis on discipline-related subjects, more than on General Education. This study tries to re-justify the importance of General Education, gives evidence to reduce resistance of students on taking General Education courses, and provide a reference to educators in their design of General Education courses for local higher education institutes.