Contribution of work integrated learning on graduates employability: a case study of Food and Drinks Manufacturing Companies in Dar es Salaam

The study focused on assessing the contribution of work integrated learning on developing graduate employability. Specifically, the study determines the contribution of the level of work experience, disciplinary knowledge and core skills while controlling for the supervisor’s years of experience. The views and perceptions of employees regarding the required graduate’s employability skills were collected by the use of questionnaires method to respondents and purposively sampled in the food and drinks manufacturing companies. The study largeted a sample size of 75 respondents and questionnaires were distributed accordingly. Out of 75 distributed questionnaires only 50 questionnaires were returned. The data was analyzed using frequencies and percentage methods in the SPSS and hypotheses tested using t-test. The result shows that work experience and disciplinary knowledge have no influence on graduate employability. However, core skills have influence on graduate employability while controlling supervisor’s years of experience. The study also found that, work experience, disciplinary knowledge, core skills as well as controlling variable (supervisor’s years of experience) have positive correlation to a dependent variable such as graduate’s employability. The study recommends that Universities should form a stronger collaboration with the labor market consultants, reform their training methods into more practical approaches of teaching. Also Food and drinks Manufacturing Companies in collaboration with Universities should inspire their graduates to take full advantage of courses outside the traditional core curriculum, develop post-graduation support and professional learning initiatives as an extension of their core business. Finally, education policy of Tanzania should be reformed in order to promote universities to engage their students in the industry practical work during their holiday time.