A Mapping of Graduate Attributes across Micro, Meso, and Macro University Experiences: Evidence from a Transnational University in China

Abstract

This study explores the complexity of generic graduate attributes, including soft skills, qualities, competencies, and capabilities in order to pinpoint how graduate attributes are cultivated in practice during the university experience. Few studies have examined the active and formative role of universities in cultivating generic graduate attributes. Even less have examined which skills and related subskills are developed according to graduates themselves, much less the extent to which those acquired specific skills mindsets and subskills are attributable to micro-level pedagogical practices, meso-level university experiences or macro-level, institution-level frameworks, vision, or mission statements. Additionally, there is a paucity of research on the attributes of graduates from transnational higher education institutions and specifically from Sino-foreign cooperative universities. This study thus aims to address these gaps and is also timely as it coincides with the twentieth anniversary of the University of Nottingham Ningbo China, established in 2004, which is the first Sino-foreign higher education institution. This study adopts an overarching exploratory research methodology mobilizing both quantitative survey data collection and qualitative in-depth, semi-structured interviews. This research is innovative because it is a bottom-up retrospective mapping to localize exactly where, within the entire university experience, graduates attribute the acquisition of their skills/graduateness, including across both curricular and extracurricular experiences.