Employability Characteristics of Teacher Education Graduates in Mindanao State University

Abstract

With the end-goal of identifying the strength, areas of improvement, and employability of the graduates, this study is grounded by the literature gap tracing the graduate education students at Mindanao State University-College of Education and their employers’ feedback and satisfaction. Thus, this present paper focuses on two areas: investigating the employability characteristics of the graduate students of MSU-CED and examining employers’ feedback and level of satisfaction with regards to the teaching proficiencies of their employees. Utilizing survey questionnaire for the graduates and checklist-interview with the employers, a total of 216 graduates of Graduate Education Department served as respondents of the study and 18 employers participated in the interview. The findings disclosed that almost all of the respondents are already employed and have permanent employment status. These graduates noted a very adequate rating of the skills in communication, human relations, leadership, and problem-solving; and extremely adequate in research skills which they perceived to have contributed to their employment. They recommended that more masteral and doctorate programs be offered by the college to develop more specialists in Teacher Education. Conversely, the employers mostly shared positive feedback and high satisfaction of their employees’ teaching proficiency and services; indicating that MSU-CED sufficiently provided effective graduate education programs that meet the demands of the education industry. Nonetheless, the employers also noted some employees who still need some areas of improvement in their teaching performance.