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© Proceedings of the Ruhuna Quality Assurance Sessions 2021 (RUQAS 2021)
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21 September 2021

and development of quality assurance system within the Sri Lankan higher education system.
Therefore, the objective of the present study is to identify the employers’ expectation on knowledge,

attitudes and skills of the graduates while examining the perception of employers in developing quality

assurance systems in higher education in Sri Lanka.

Methodology

The present study was designed to conduct as a pre-tested questionnaire survey. Employers who
engaged in occupations in the Agricultural sector were considered as the targeted population. A

Google form-based questionnaire was prepared to collect primary data in English medium and it was

sent to the employers who are hiring as well as not hiring graduates from Faculty of Agriculture,
University of Ruhuna, using snowball sampling technique. The initial questionnaire was prepared with

the assistance of previous literature and pre-testing was done with 5 respondents and their feedback
was considered in designing the final questionnaire. The reliability of the questionnaire was measured

using Cronbach’s alpha (Taber, 2018) and it has given 0.7 Cronbach’s alpha value for each
questionnaire item.

Accordingly, the questionnaire was designed to assess the perception of employers towards the

development of quality assurance framework to enhance the employability of Agricultural graduates.

A five-point Likert scale was used to identify their views on the existing quality assurance framework
available in the university system in Sri Lanka. The link was disabled after 7 days of circulation (from

th
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1 of July 2021-7 July 2021) and 30 responses were obtained. IBM SPSS version 25 software was
mainly utilized for analytical purposes. Primary data were analyzed by using descriptive and
inferential statistical methods such as the Wilcoxon Signed Rank test. The Wilcoxon Signed Rank test

was selected to measure the significance of statements provided by the respondents.

Results and Discussion

Demographic Profile

There were 65% male and 35% female respondents. Thirty five percent respondents belonged to the

45-55 age category. Sixty two percent have stated degree level as their highest educational level while
35% have studied up to postgraduate level. The majority, 57% of the participants, represented the

private sector. Seventy percent of the respondents are engaged in managerial level occupations and
35% of officials are engaged in their current job for about 10-15 years.

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