THE STATUS OF EMPLOYABILTY OF TECHNICAL AND VOCATIONAL GRADUATES FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF CULTURAL- STUDENT DEPUTIES

Equipping students with a variety of competencies and skills to succeed in the job market and improve their employability is one of the criteria for assessing the quality of universities, especially third generation and entrepreneurial universities. Given the importance of employability, this study aims to analyze the level of employability of technical and vocational graduates (TVG) in a mixed method including quantitative survey and qualitative content. The statistical population of the study includes 107 cultural-student deputies of technical and vocational colleges. For data gathering, a constructed researcher-made questionnaire from the De Vos & Soenz (2008) questionnaire was used, Descriptive statistics and t-test were used to analyze quantitative data. Based on the research, the employability of TVG has been evaluated from the perspective of the deputies at the desired level. In the second part, the solutions for improving the employability level of TVG are investigated. Based on the analysis of the deputy perspectives, 5 main categories, 13 sub-categories and 108 key concepts have been extracted and categorized to improve the employability level of TVG. Using the proposed solutions such as reviewing curricula and adapting them to the needs of the market, providing higher education and establishing and developing disciplines and colleges based on it, equipping infrastructures and reorganizing workshops and laboratories, promoting entrepreneurship culture and highlighting the role of the disciplines, continuous relation with industry, holding effective internship courses and support of TV graduates to start a business, can greatly improve the employability level of the graduates.