Abstract
Since its establishment two and half decades ago, the School of Management Sciences at the University of Venda (UNIVEN) has produced hundreds of Bachelor of Commerce (BCOM) graduates for the South African work force. Yet the School has had no formal feedback from its graduates regarding the relevance, usefulness, strengths and weakness of its BCOM programmes. The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of the BCOM (Accounting) programme on job prospects of UNIVEN graduates. A structured questionnaire was sent to a sample of 61 graduates of UNIVEN’s BCOMA programme through the Snowball technique of tracing survey respondents. The questionnaire sought the participating graduates’ opinions on several aspects of their educational experience at Univen including adequacy of the training and employability, among others. The study used the IBM SPSS version 21 to analyse the study data. The key findings of the study suggest that the components of the BCOMA programme that need major improvement to increase the employability of graduates are training in practical skills, using computers in Accounting training, as well as improvement in teaching and delivery methods. The study also found that modules offered in the BCOM programme were relevant to the graduate’s job needs.
Highlights
It is generally acknowledged that a purposive and effective tertiary education and training system is fundamental to generating competent and essential high level skills and knowledge that are vital for the socio-economic development of a country (Harvey, 2000)
Sampling Frame and Strategies for Tracing Graduates: At the time this study was conducted at the end of 2011, there were over 1350 Bachelor of Commerce (BCOM) (Accounting) graduates who had completed their undergraduate degree programme between 2001 and 2011 from the School of Management Sciences (SMS), at the University of Venda (Office of the School Administrator, School of Management Sciences, December 2011)
Socio-demographic profile of BCOM (Accounting) Graduates: Of the 61 graduates that participated in this study, 54% were females, with males making up 46% of participants
Summary
It is generally acknowledged that a purposive and effective tertiary education and training system is fundamental to generating competent and essential high level skills and knowledge that are vital for the socio-economic development of a country (Harvey, 2000). Some media reports have questioned the quality of the UNIVEN Bachelor of Commerce (Accounting) general degree They claim that the programme is of a low quality and that the graduates are unemployable. The indictment again is that the graduates possess inferior skills Such damning indictments from the press have created a poor public perception about UNIVEN’s programmes. To date no systematic study has been carried out to assess the impact of BCOM programmes in terms of the vocational destination of these graduates This calls for an empirical study that will provide accurate and verifiable data that could be scientifically analysed to determine the adequacy or otherwise of the BCOM degree programmes. The purpose of the study is to fill this gap in the literature by analysing the relevance and usefulness of the UNIVEN’s BCOM Accounting programme in meeting the job needs of graduates
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