Developing Student Learning Support for Graduates Employability Through Entrepreneurial Clinic

Dhewi, Ratna Marta and Yoyoh, K. and Oetoyo, Boedhi and Rusyana, Enang and Sara, Dem Vi (2014) Developing Student Learning Support for Graduates Employability Through Entrepreneurial Clinic. In: 28th Annual Conference of the Association of Open University, 28-31 Oktober 2014, Hongkong, China.

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Abstract

Improving the educational system is a key step towards creating graduates who possess the knowledge, skills and abilities to participate in the economic area, locally and globally. Recently, developing graduates employability is one of the concerned issues for ensuring their successful transition to the labour market and their access to career oriented employment and furthermore to create jobs. Graduates need to acquire the competencies that will allow them to find work and cope with unpredictable labour market changes. Therefore, Indonesia Open University (Universitas Terbuka/UT) with large potential of 579.261 students (2014) spread out from Sumatera Island to Irian Jaya Island, seeks approaches and strategies to prepare its graduates for the labour market continuously. However, efforts in improving the distance learning system have encountered various obstacles such as limitations in learning facilities, curriculum content, and competency of graduates. In addressing this issue, survey shows that majority students of UT who are small medium entrepreneurs, employees and job seekers need to have concrete learning facility to support them having certain competencies and skills to compete in labour market. This experimental research aims to discover the prospective of university entrepreneurial clinic which intends to develop the entrepreneur spirit and graduates employability. The study case in Bogor regional office investigates the enthusiasm of the students from all faculties to join entrepreneurial clinic, and addresses top three majors which show enthusiasm for entrepreneurship from management, communication and accounting by 33%, 20%and 18% respectively. The result shows that the students urgently need to be encouraged to develop their confidence, to focus on their high performance, to have good persuasive, communication and negotiation skills in informal curricula. The entrepreneurial clinic succeeds to motivate 53% of students to create their own business after they graduate. However, the others choose to be employed as government officers or private employees. This research includes a discussion of student learning support which will help UT and other education institutions to gain an insight to develop graduates employability through entrepreneurial clinic and a discussion of the changes that could be made to improve the quality of teaching.

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