An Assessment of Generic Skills and Competencies of Architecture Graduates in Nigeria

Abstract

Graduate unemployment has become a fundamental problem worldwide, necessitating studies that seek to identify generic transferable skills towards improving prospects for graduates in future. Several disciplines have received such research attention. There has been comparatively less attention paid to establishing generic skills/competencies that will boost the employability potentials of architecture graduates. A total of 102 survey questionnaires containing 19 generic skills/competencies were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-tests as well as the Wilcoxon signed ranked test in SPSS v.21. Results reveal that the most developed skills by architecture graduates, also considered important by respondents were basic knowledge of the field/discipline, creativity, knowledge of the profession, computing/ICT and the capacity to learn. Other important skills were decision making, ability to work as part of an interdisciplinary team, capacity to apply knowledge in practice, time management, responsibility for one's own work/self-criticism, interpersonal/communication, ethical commitment as well as leadership skills. The study recommends that stakeholders in architecture education re-iterate the acute need for architecture graduates to develop important generic skills to improve their versatility and employment potentials in future.

Keywords: Architecture, Competencies, Generic skills, Graduates, Unemployment