The Impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic on Master Graduates’ Employability

Agnieszka Sękala (), Krzysztof Foit, Damian Krenczyk, Tomasz Blaszczyk, Gabriel Kost and Mariola Jureczko
Additional contact information
Agnieszka Sękala: Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Silesian University of Technology, Konarskiego 18A, 44-100 Gliwice, Poland
Krzysztof Foit: Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Silesian University of Technology, Konarskiego 18A, 44-100 Gliwice, Poland
Damian Krenczyk: Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Silesian University of Technology, Konarskiego 18A, 44-100 Gliwice, Poland
Tomasz Blaszczyk: Department of Engineering Technology and Didactics, Technical University of Denmark, Lautrupvang 15, DK-2750 Ballerup, Denmark
Gabriel Kost: Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Silesian University of Technology, Konarskiego 18A, 44-100 Gliwice, Poland
Mariola Jureczko: Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Silesian University of Technology, Konarskiego 18A, 44-100 Gliwice, Poland

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 5, 1-17

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic brought the global economy to a near standstill. The scale of the coronavirus and the associated losses have left many countries facing a humanitarian, social and economic crisis. The main objective of the research presented in this article was to determine to what extent the support provided within the activities of the Motokadra project (2018–2020) within the framework of the Operational Programme Knowledge Education Development, funded by the European Social Fund, enabled its participants to adapt to the labour market conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The project participants were full-time Master’s students within the faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Silesian University of Technology. They formed the experimental group. The authors examined changes in the employability of the experimental group in the pre-pandemic and post-pandemic periods. The students in the experimental group represented several fields of study, which also allowed the authors to analyse which discipline appeared to be more resilient to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis and whether the profile of the discipline affected employability. The employability of graduates in the automotive industry was particularly examined. The results of the analyses allow us to conclude that the labour market crisis linked to the COVID-19 pandemic negatively affected the experimental group’s employability level. Furthermore, it has been shown that the study of the automation and robotics discipline increases the chances of finding a job after graduation.

Keywords: automotive; employment; graduates; labour market; students; COVID-19; Operational Programme Knowledge Education Development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/5/4231/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/5/4231/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:5:p:4231-:d:1081365

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().