2.3 Relationship between Generic Skills and Academic Achievement

There are various factors that influence the outcome of top academic performers. The students themselves play critical role in making them to be high achievers having effective learning strategies or styles, learning goals, ability to build on knowledge and strategic thinking. Successful students use strategic thinking in their approach to learning, reasoning, problem solving, and concept learning. They understand and can use a variety of strategies to help them reach learning and performance goals, and to apply their knowledge in various situations (Azizi, 2003). In addition, they also know what to do if a problem occurs or if they are not making sufficient or timely progress towards a goal. They can generate alternative methods to reach their goal or even reassess the appropriateness and utility of the goal.

For many years in higher education across the world, it was believed that only those students who possessed the talents and achieved good grades in examination would succeed in their future. Today, however, with increased mass and expensive higher education, this philosophy in no longer appropriate, since restricting failure or dropout cannot be viewed as sole criteria of quality and hallmarks of high standards (Favish, 2003). A new view of what constitutes quality and success in higher education has become imperative – one that accommodates increased student diversity and considers processes that contribute to holistic development (Harvey and Green 1993).

In view of the complex expectations of higher education and the difficulty of predicting the needs of constantly changing societies, it is important to determine the perceptions and expectations of students in higher education, instead of merely depending on impressive academic achievement. Generic skills are almost essential to do well in examination because a large component of the final exam in higher learning institution is usually based on case studies, and students are expected to apply their knowledge of the unit’s theoretical concepts.

Raymond and Chadi (2008) noted that in addition to any general weaknesses, undergraduate accounting students do not fully understand the importance of generic skills in the accounting profession. They have a tendency to underestimate the importance placed by employers and educators on non-technical skills (such as communication skills) and rank technical accountancy skills much higher (Usoff and Feldmann 1998).

Other studies show that “hard skills” trump “soft skills” as determinants of academic success. Based on analyses of data from six longitudinal studies, Duncan et al. (2007) find that early math and reading skills are stronger predictors of later achievement than non-cognitive traits, such as attention-related capacities, social strengths and behavioral deficits. Lleras (2008) reports similar results from a study analyzing data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study, as do Claessens et. al. (2009) based on data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study.

Students change significantly in a number of ways throughout studying at higher learning institution. One of these areas is their perception of confidence in their own ability to demonstrate generic skills. For instance, confidence levels in some skills relate more strongly to actual academic performance. While it is too early for this study to point any value of perceptual change for development purpose, it appears that positive perception of problem solving and decision making for example, might appear to be potentially strongly linked to better academic performance, and need further investigation.