Impact of ICT Skills and University Education on Industry Employability in Post Covid-19 Era

Employability has always been on the front burner for many industries when it comes to employment and there has been constant debate whether university education is enough or not. Covid-19 came with a significant paradigm shift, which submerged many industries but also causing drastic change in the way industries carried out their operations. This study, therefore, investigated employability skills in post Covid-19 era with specific focus on ICT and university education. This study adopted survey research design with the questionnaire as the main instrument of data collection. The data collection instrument was subjected to reliability and validity tests. The reliability tests from the pilot study using only 20 respondents showed that the Cronbach Alpha test statistic for the three likert scale questions are above the benchmark of 0.7 indicating that the research instrument measures what it purports to measure. Experts in the area of study also screened the questions to ensure its content validity. Logit regression was used to determine the employability skills that industries give pre-eminence while seeking for who to employ and also how these employability skills impact on growth of the industries before or after Covid-19 period. The Logit regression was adopted because the dependent variable is binary in nature. This study is conducted from two prisms: from the point of view of the employee and employer. Results from the employee-point of view indicate that ICT skills and communication skills have the most likelihood to increase employability while tertiary education and leadership skills do not have the likelihood of increasing employability. Furthermore, from the employer-point of view, ICT skills alone is the greatest determinant of employability. In the first and second scenario, ICT and communication skills are both significant although the impact of ICT is higher than others. The study recommends the integration of cutting-edge technology and innovations in ICT in the tertiary curricula in order to give graduates of tertiary institutions the required employability skills in order to compete favourably with college and even non-college persons who obtain these skills from specialized training centres.