Transversal Skills in Higher Education Curricula

Abstract

Not the least due to rising public expectations and a changing self-perception, HEIs (higher education institutions) are increasingly concerned with the labor market relevance of their educational offerings. However, adapting curricula according to labor market information is a challenging task for HEIs, given financial, administrative and legal constraints. In this light, integrating “transversal skill”-modules into the curricula as cross-discipline key competences “particular valued by employers” (OECD, 2019) is an efficient way for HEIs to react upon skill demands in a flexible and efficient – partly cross-curricular – way. The chapter at hand retraces the paradigm shift in higher education (HE) toward graduate employability and applies a concept based on Suessenbach et al. (2021) to define the vague term of transversal skills. An empirical investigation of the prevalence of transversal skills in HE study programs is done via the analysis of a total of 1,243 Bachelor curricula from public universities of Austria, Ireland and Portugal. As will be shown, the three countries differ, among others, in terms of their HE systems and labor markets for HE graduates. The comparative curriculum analysis also reveals differences with a view to how and which transversal skills are integrated in the curricula. In Austria and Portugal, they could be found in almost half of all curricula and the majority were mandatory modules. In Ireland, they were occurred in less than a fifth of the curricula, the large majority being optional. In Portugal, a noticeable focus on generic digital skills could be elicited, markedly stronger than in the other two countries.