21st Century life and career skills: building an employability pathway in an international University in Vietnam

The P21's Framework for 21st Century Learning was developed to illustrate the skills that 21st Century students need to thrive in a changing world including life and career skills. Employability is a set of achievements - skills, understandings and personal attributes - that make graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations, which benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy' (Yorke, 2004). Employability in the 21st century means being employable, regardless of the prevailing economic climate. A 2015 group report, Improving RMIT's graduate employability and outcomes, presented the outcomes of a benchmarking analysis of employability strategies across 18 comparable and best practice universities, and identified that a clear employability strategy aligned to the university's overarching strategy was a distinguishing feature of universities with high graduate employment outcomes. While acknowledging RMIT Vietnam's current success in graduate employability rates, it was proposed that a coherent institutional strategy transparent to all stakeholders was needed. RMIT Vietnam employability framework seeks to reimagine the student experience by constructing a coherent narrative for students around the development of their employability skills that begins the day they commence their studies and to integrate an emphasis on employability skills into the culture of the institution at every level. This paper will present how RMIT Vietnam's employability pathway integrates existing programs such as personal edge, existing employment preparation and career support and sees these leveraged within the internal program curricula. A pathway is mapped and evidenced throughout programs across soft skills development and project-based WIL experiences, with a high impact internship experience being an important milestone in the journey.