22 Sep Kingston University rolls out first phase of sector-leading Future Skills programme to prepare students for world of work
New Kingston University students will be the first to benefit from an innovative education model providing them with future-proofed skills for career success.
All first-year undergraduates will participate in Navigate modules, being rolled out from September as the university marks the launch of its Future Skills programme.
Students will complete Navigate as an integral part of their courses, before progressing on to further expand their skills and knowledge through Explore and Apply modules during the second and third years of their degrees.
The development comes as part of the university’s drive to ensure every student acquires the skills most valued by employers, including problem solving, critical thinking, communication and creativity.
The programme builds on research undertaken as part of the University’s Future Skills campaign, which has been highlighting the economic imperative of skills for innovation since its inception in 2021. Since that time, the campaign has gone from strength to strength, garnering widespread support from business and industry leaders, government policy-makers, politicians and peers.
Informed by campaign research, which last year included a YouGov survey of more than 2,000 major businesses and 1,000 students, the University has identified nine attributes it will instil in its future graduates – creative problem solving, digital competency, being enterprising, having a questioning mindset, adaptability, empathy, collaboration, resilience and self-awareness. It is aiming to ensure all students are able to demonstrate the full set of attributes in a wide variety of contexts by the time they complete their undergraduate degrees, boosting their employability and their ability to make a meaningful contribution in their workplace and community.
The University’s Director of Student Development and Graduate Success, Ali Orr, said. “As evidenced in the University’s Future Skills research findings, employers really value the higher-level skills our students gain. These can sometimes be viewed as softer skills but are, in reality, the hardest to develop.
“Ensuring our graduates are able to call on this broader skillset to meet the changing needs of employers is absolutely vital, particularly as they prepare to enter a rapidly evolving world of work where many of the jobs they will eventually hold don’t yet exist.”