The match between higher education skill supply and employers’ skill needs in Ethiopia

Abstract The purpose of this study investigated the match between higher education skill supply and employers’ skill needs, with a special focus on engineering graduates in Ethiopia. Using an embedded mixed method design, the study analyzed both primary and secondary data on the match between higher education supply and employers needs for discipline-specific, technical, interpersonal, and generic skills. 275 research participants recruited from employees, employers, higher education instructors, and decision-makers took part in the study. The findings of the study revealed that higher learning institutes moderately equip graduates with discipline-specific skills, technical skills, interpersonal skills, and generic skills, while employers’ need for these skills is high. These indicate existence of a significant mismatch between higher education skill supply and employers’ needs, which was higher for technical and generic skills than interpersonal and discipline-specific academic skills. Such mismatch between higher education skill supply and employers’ skill needs negatively affect economic performance and social security through increasing rate of graduates’ unemployment. To mitigate such problems, higher learning institutes could conduct real employers’ needs assessments before preparing training curricula and need to update training styles and contents accordingly. The skills employees acquire at work, factors contributing to the mismatch between skill supply and employers’ needs, and impacts of skill mismatch could be future research areas.