Assessing employability skills: how are current assessment practices “fair” for international students?

Preparing students' employability has become a great concern of universities and other stakeholders. Universities have taken the skills-based approach to enhance students’ professional skills as a “solution” to enhance students’ education-to-work transition. Although this approach has been widely applied, professional skills are still perceived as supplementary to the curriculum or part of work-integrated learning units. Consequently, assessment has been designed to mainly assess content knowledge. Insufficient attention has been paid to how students’ professional skills could be assessed properly. Importantly, current practices designed to assess students’ professional skills disadvantage international students in various ways. This chapter critically discusses how current assessment practices of employability skills are not “fair” for international students. Implications to better support international students are also discussed.