Academic English writing has been considered essential for higher education; however, for the industry, could undergraduate research experiences properly equip students with employability skills? Fifty-six students and 27 professionals participated in this study. The results, from analyzing the survey and reflective-journals, encouraged a new shape of research practice.
Academic English writing has been considered essential for higher education, and writing English research paper seemed to be the key to access the international academic world. However, in the 21st century, while facing the dynamic need of the industry, the research-oriented emphasis of higher education has been frequently challenged by the practitioners at workplace, especially emphasizing that a considerable gap exists between the skills required by employers and the skills possessed by the university graduates. Though English is still highly valued for employment, and English competency is always required for all industry sectors, it is not certain whether the English research paper writing experiences in college increase the competitiveness of higher education graduates at workplace. This study therefore aimed to investigate whether undergraduate research experiences could properly equip students with employability skills. The participants were 56 EFL university graduates, who had undergraduate research experiences, and 27 professionals in various industries, who were in charge of the recruitment. The survey containing employability skills was distributed to the participants online for about one month. Also, the reflection written by the 56 graduates were collected to see how they perceived the experiences of writing research paper in college. The survey data were analyzed with the ranking and the reflection entries were analyzed in a grounded manner as the supportive evidence to triangulate with the survey outcome. The results showed the discrepancies between academia and industry; however, there were also similarities among top ranking employability skills. The similarities and differences seemed to encourage the academia to maintain the needed academic research practice in a new shape of curriculum design and foci. The implications for academia-industry research practices and the academic-employability skills cultivation were also addressed.
