Training and Development is the continuous process of improving skills, gaining knowledge, clarifying concepts and changing attitude through structured and planned education by which the productivity and performance of the employees can be enhanced. Training and Development emphasize on the improvement of the performance of individuals as well as groups through a proper system within the organization which focuses on the skills, methodology and content required to achieve the objective. Good & efficient training of employees helps in their skills & knowledge development, which eventually helps a company improve its productivity leading to overall growth.

This book is among the first of its kind to comprehensively examine the implementation of soft skills in universities in the developing country, Vietnam. The context is unique as the implementation is taking place within the distinctive socio-economic, cultural and political characteristics of the country, amidst several simultaneously-executed educational reforms. Tran lays down the foundation for discussion by providing readers with a comprehensive review of how soft skills implementation has come into existence in higher education across the globe, before diving into the implementation of soft skills in Vietnamese universities. He goes on to highlight the interesting differences in the conceptualization of soft skills between Vietnamese universities and those in the West. The book depicts and compares how university leaders and managers tackle contextual factors, submit to constraints enforced by political forces, and how they use institutional advantages available for implementation. It goes further to examine how personal and contextual factors affect teachers’ and students’ engagement with the implementation, and highlights the role of work-integrated learning and extra-curricular activities in developing soft skills for students. Finally, the book investigates the contribution of external stakeholders, such as alumni, employers, skills experts, and local authorities, to the implementation and obstacles that prevent their participation. This book will be a valuable reference for the implementation of soft skills in higher education around the world.

What does higher education offer to make students competent actors in the world of work and other life spheres? This issue is most controversially debated in economically advanced countries since about four decades when higher education in economically advanced countries began to serve larger ranges of the occupational pyramid than merely the intellectually and professionally chosen few. The author of this volume analyzes a broad range of issues over four decades of his academic career. Employers’ and graduate surveys, secondary analyses of education and employment statistics as well as analyses of policy and academic debates form the basis of the key argument: Neither trust in expectations formulated by employers or in income and status as measures of successful study nor isolated claims for the pursuit of academic knowledge for its own sake and for the critical functions of higher education are a suitable reference frame for understanding the dynamic links between higher education and the world of work. A “match” between the number of graduates and the corresponding positions or between the competences acquired during study and job requirements cannot be expected. Students are more ambitious and strive for a broader range of goals than they can expect to be rewarded. Graduates have to be both highly qualified experts and sceptics as far as conventional wisdom is concerned, and they have to be prepared for indeterminate tasks. Key themes of this collection of essays are: the causes and consequences of an imperfect “match” between higher education and employment; the tensions between “employment” and “work” orientation in higher education; opportunities of a “highly educated society”; the dynamics of the variety of students, the patterns of the higher education system and the horizontal and vertical diversity of careers; different notions of higher education and the world of work among economically advanced countries; major controversial notions of professional relevance of study in policy and research debates.

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

2018 Frederic W. Ness Book Award, AAC&U How can educators ensure that young people who attain a postsecondary credential are adequately prepared for the future? Matthew T. Hora and his colleagues explain that the answer is not simply that students need more specialized technical training to meet narrowly defined employment opportunities. Beyond the Skills Gap challenges this conception of the “skills gap,” highlighting instead the value of broader twenty-first-century skills in postsecondary education. They advocate for a system in which employers share responsibility along with the education sector to serve the collective needs of the economy, society, and students. Drawing on interviews with educators in two- and four-year institutions and employers in the manufacturing and biotechnology sectors, the authors demonstrate the critical importance of habits of mind such as problem solving, teamwork, and communication. They go on to show how faculty and program administrators can create active learning experiences that develop students’ skills across a range of domains. The book includes in-depth descriptions of eight educators whose classrooms exemplify the effort to blend technical learning with the cultivation of twenty-first-century habits of mind. The study, set in Wisconsin, takes place against the backdrop of heated political debates over the role of public higher education. This thoughtful and nuanced account, enriched by keen observations of postsecondary instructional practice, promises to contribute new insights to the rich literature on workforce development and to provide valuable guidance for postsecondary faculty and administrators.

I was hired by a major university to teach recently released offenders how to become employed. I walked into my first class intending to follow the lead of all the other job training programs in the city, which was teaching the students to properly fill out applications, write resumes, facilitate mock interviews, and locate employment opportunities. After the first couple of classes, most of the students were either not paying attention or sleeping. I quickly realized my presentation needed to be interesting, challenging, beneficial, and actually guide the participants on how to remain employed. However, I was unable to find any published material for teaching new hires the soft skills necessary to keep a job. This workbook is a compilation of the soft skills class material I have developed over an eighteen year period. I have used this material with great success and have taught soft skills in schools, inner-city church programs, nonprofits, and government funded job training programs. It is a unique collection of essays, exercises, quotes, and maxims that will give students a realistic perspective on work-related expectations and the expectations of the supervisors who hire them. It will help students develop their problem solving skills, guide them in making appropriate decisions, and create a desire to plan out goals and achieve them. The workbook style is challenging and playful, serious and engaging and a stepping stone to developing the cognitive skills necessary to quash unproductive thinking and self-defeating emotional behaviors.