Browsing by Subject "valmistuneet"

The Bachelor’s degree should prepare students for the working life. Previous research has shown that especially students from generalist study fields have challenges to transfer to working life. In order to succeed in an ever-changing working life, students must learn during their studies the needed generic skills. The aim of this Master’s Thesis was to explore what generic skills the Bachelor’s graduates experienced that they had learned during their university studies, and which generic skills were the most important that should be learnt during university studies. Many previous studies have explored generic skills using quantitative methods, so there is a clear need for a qualitative approach. The research material of present study consists of 10 interviews of graduated generalist Bachelor students from The Faculty of Arts at the University of Helsinki. The research was conducted using theory-bound content analysis. The graduates described that they had learnt the following generic skills during their university studies: academic knowledge and thinking skills, knowledge integration skills, social and communication skills, leadership and network skills, IT skills and lifelong learning skills. The graduates experienced that academic knowledge and thinking skills were the most learnt skills, and they considered the skills to be the most important generic skills that should be learned during university studies. Other skills perceived important were knowledge integration skills, social and communication skills and lifelong learning skills. Identifying generic skills appeared to be challenging for some of the graduates. Based on the results, it can be concluded that the graduates emphasised that they have learnt generic skills moderately well during their studies. However, social and communications skills should be further developed during studies because challenges in learning them have been observed as this study shows.