Assessment of employers' ratings and work preparedness of Science Laboratory Technology graduates in Nigeria

This study examined the employers' ratings of the skills of Science Laboratory Technology (SLT) graduates. Also, it assessed the work preparedness of the final-year students of the programme for the workplace. The study used a quantitative descriptive survey covering all eleven universities offering the programme in Nigeria. The study population comprises all the final-year students of the SLT programme and supervisors of practising SLT graduates at the workplace. The probability proportion to size sampling technique was adopted to select a sample of interest from the final-year students of SLT, while the supervisors of the graduates were purposefully selected. The Employers' Rating of Graduate Skills Questionnaire (ERGSQ) and Students' Work Preparedness Questionnaire (SWPQ) were used to collect data from the employers and the final-year students, respectively. The study suggests the establishment of a frequent feedback loop with employers to incorporate the skills sought after in the workplace.