The issue of academic achievement among Chinese university students is emerging due to difficulties in finding employment. This study investigates the structural relationships between social support, goal orientation, and academic achievement with the aim of enhancing students’ academic performance and facilitating sustained employability. Data were collected from 202 college students in South China, revealing that students’ levels of social support, goal orientation, and academic achievement were all moderate. Lower-grade students, in comparison to higher-grade students, exhibited lower levels of social support, goal orientation, and academic achievement. Additionally, students from lower economic backgrounds tended to lack social support. Among the factors of social support, goal orientation, and academic achievement, there were positive correlations among these three variables. Social support significantly and positively influenced goal orientation and academic achievement. Specifically, the sub-factors of social support, school support, and teacher support had differential effects, with school support enhancing academic achievement and teacher support boosting goal orientation. Goal orientation also significantly and positively impacted students’ academic achievement, with the sub-factor of mastery goals having a stronger influence. Goal orientation partially mediated the relationship between social support and academic achievement. This study discusses limitations and provides insights for future research.

Universities continue to provide solutions to private and public sectors of the economy by providing a skilled economy, increasing employment potentials, and improving employee performance. This study offered a theoretical model on the contributing factors to graduate employability among student entrepreneurs in Malaysian Higher Education and the mediating mechanism of perceived support and usefulness in social entrepreneurship to solve the graduate unemployment problem. We attained data using purposive and face-to-face sampling methods with acceptable data from 296 undergraduates and analyzed with the SEM software from respondents of various cultural backgrounds. Findings suggest a positive significant relationship between motivations, skills in social entrepreneurship, knowledge, and social elements on graduate employability. Similarly, perceived support explained skills, knowledge and social elements’ relationship to graduate employability except for perceived usefulness. The outcome further discovered the perceived support role for graduates of social entrepreneurship in fostering job crafting and future employability with various implications and recommendations. The results require the application of other research approaches to provide concrete implementations and social and economic solutions. Insightful results and proposals helpful to policymakers like higher education curricula developers and implementers, scholars, government and private universities of this study can help curb graduate unemployment through social entrepreneurship.

The integration of new technologies and digitalisation causing significant changes in the skills demanded, leading to skills shortages and skills gaps in digital context. Undoubtedly, the employees’ digital skills and knowledge need to be aligned with the ongoing technological changes. This study obtains inputs from the employers from professional services sector regarding the demand for digital skills and the existence of gaps in digital skill among the employees. The impact of digital skills and willingness to pay for the micro-credential on the employability was investigate. 308 responses from the employers reside in Klang Valley, Johor and Penang collected via online survey. The five areas of digital skills adopted from Digital Competence 2.0, and the pair-sample t-test in SPSS was used to identify the present of skill gaps. Besides, PLS-SEM was used to test the hypotheses with regard to impacts of digital skills and micro credential on employability. The findings indicate that problem-solving and safety skills were ranked as highly demanded digital skills in the future. The skill gaps were found in all areas of digital skills except information and data literacy. The employers agreed that digital skills did affect their decision in hiring the graduate employees and they are willing to pay for micro-credentials to address the skills gaps. Yet, willingness to pay for micro-credentials did not affect the employability directly and indirectly. This study provides insights into the demand of digital skills and the digital skills gaps. Implications of the study from theoretical and practical perspectives are discussed.

This study investigates the critical skills required for new entrants to succeed in today’s workforce, focusing on both soft and hard skills. Through a comprehensive systematic review of existing literature using the PRISMA method, we analyzed 12 selected journals from an initial pool of 870, sourced from major databases such as Scopus, Science Direct, and Emerald Insight. Our research uncovers four key insights. First, we provide a clear and precise definition of employability skills, establishing the foundation for what competencies are essential for workforce readiness. Second, our analysis identifies a distinct separation between soft and hard skills, with soft skills such as communication, problem-solving, teamwork, ethics, and leadership being universally critical across all industries. Third, while soft skills have broad applicability, hard skills are highly specialized, varying significantly depending on industry and job role. To simplify their understanding and application, we categorized these hard skills into specific groups. Finally, the study highlights the urgent need for further empirical research to validate these findings in real-world settings, as the current conclusions are drawn solely from literature. This potential gap between academic preparation and industry expectations underscores the necessity for ongoing collaboration between educational institutions and employers, which will be a primary focus of our future research.