Dual-stakeholder alignment between graduate self-efficacy and employer expectations
The transition from multilingual higher education into professional employment reveals complex misalignments between curricular delivery and labour market integration. Empirical investigations highlight that language proficiency and intercultural exposure provide distinct cultural and social capital, enhancing career identity transformation and cross-border mobility [2]. However, the presence of language-enhanced credentials does not automatically ensure parity in employment outcomes. A prominent structural challenge emerges from dual-stakeholder perceptual divergence: while institutional guidance programmes foster cognitive familiarity with occupational expectations, they frequently fail to build corresponding practical and adaptive capabilities demanded by recruiting organisations [1]. Furthermore, labour market returns on educational credentials exhibit substantial variation across fields and institutional types, underscoring that language proficiency must be embedded within broader experiential and skills-based learning frameworks rather than taught as an isolated academic discipline [3]. In the absence of institutional mechanisms that bridge the divide between theoretical language acquisition and real-world workplace application, graduates face diminished conversion rates of their linguistic assets into sustainable career trajectories [1], [2].