What university attributes predict for graduate employability?

Abstract

Research universities play an important role in developing new technologies that can be the basis for economic development, improved quality of life, and reduced environmental impacts. In developing countries, there have been accelerated efforts to transform teaching-oriented higher education institutions into research-intensive universities that can contribute to social development through the generation of new knowledge. There have also been parallel efforts to use internationalization to enrich both education and research. However, the effect of such reforms on the employability of university graduates is unclear. In this work, the influence of different institution attributes on graduate employability is investigated using the hyperbox machine learning technique, which is capable of generating classification models in the form of if/then rules. The analysis focuses on Southeast Asian universities listed in the 2020 Quacquarelli Symonds Asian University Rankings and uses the normalized scores across the different ranking criteria. Five plausible rule-based classifiers are derived and validated. The results show notable association between research and internationalization metrics with employability.