A systems approach to holistic assessment of students in higher education in relation to recruitment

• Main Author: Lim, Edward Xun Qian
• Other Authors: Chen Songlin
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2019
• Subjects: Engineering::Systems engineering; Business::General::Careers and profession
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/136502
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

There is an ongoing public discourse involving different stakeholders in the Singapore society to “move beyond academic grades”. These stakeholders involve government, educators, employers and civic society members. Non-governmental organisations have been set up to raise awareness about the need for society to move beyond this stigma. One key issue that is being discussed with respect to society’s focus on academic grades is the use of the Grade Point Average (GPA) as a yardstick to recruiting fresh graduates. The public discourse has prompted action from universities and government leaders to make changes to policies that signalled a shift away from focusing mainly on academic grades and towards a holistic approach to education. However, there are lack of proper research and study towards this topic which requires an analytical approach to validate and engineer a set of solutions. Hence, the objective of this study is to use the systems engineering approach, more specifically, the Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), to analyse a very complex systematic issue where several stakeholders are involved and propose a set of systems that would solve the identified sets of problems. In SSM, the problem is first identified and defined so that a rich picture can be drawn to begin the CATWOE analysis. The CATWOE analysis breaks down the perspectives of the different stakeholders so that proposed models can take these perspectives into account. Subsequently, the proposed system is modelled and analysed for feasibility. The key features of the systems include changing how recruiters can hire fresh graduates or to change how universities conduct their undergraduate programmes. They all have the same intended outcome; which is to allow the fresh graduate to be hired based on the skills and experiences he or she can offer. These proposed systems can then be adopted by key decision makers. The study would conclude with key recommendations and follow up studies to complement this study.