TY - JOUR

T1 - Employability of german geography graduates

T2 - The mismatch between knowledge acquired and competences required

AU - Hennemann, Stefan

AU - Liefner, Ingo

N1 - Funding Information: The authors are indebted to James F. Petersen of Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas, for his valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper and Christian Diller and Jürg Luterbacher for the example of a current project module. They also thank five anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments that eventually brought significant improvements to this paper. They very much appreciate the financial support by JLU Giessen for carrying out the alumni survey.

PY - 2010/5/1

Y1 - 2010/5/1

N2 - The employability of university graduates is a concern in higher education as labour markets change more and more rapidly. This is of particular relevance for multi-faceted subjects such as geography. Studies on employability have to consider to what degree a university education helps graduates start a career. The results of a survey of 257 geography graduates of JLU (Justus Liebig University) Giessen, Germany, indicate that the traditional curricula did not necessarily prepare German geographers adequately for their jobs. The graduates possess more knowledge than required but lack important competences and transferable skills that the job market demands. This may be partly remedied by the introduction of project-oriented classes.

AB - The employability of university graduates is a concern in higher education as labour markets change more and more rapidly. This is of particular relevance for multi-faceted subjects such as geography. Studies on employability have to consider to what degree a university education helps graduates start a career. The results of a survey of 257 geography graduates of JLU (Justus Liebig University) Giessen, Germany, indicate that the traditional curricula did not necessarily prepare German geographers adequately for their jobs. The graduates possess more knowledge than required but lack important competences and transferable skills that the job market demands. This may be partly remedied by the introduction of project-oriented classes.

KW - Competences

KW - Education mismatch

KW - Employability

KW - Higher education

KW - Knowledge

KW - Problem-based learning

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=77951778397&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/03098260903227400

DO - 10.1080/03098260903227400

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:77951778397

VL - 34

SP - 215

EP - 230

JO - Journal of Geography in Higher Education

JF - Journal of Geography in Higher Education

SN - 0309-8265

IS - 2

ER -