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Article

Higher Education Fields of Study and the Use of Transferable Skills at Work: An Analysis Using Data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) in Canada

by
Christine E. B. Mishra
1,2,*,
David Walters
3,
Evan D. G. Fraser
4,
Daniel Gillis
5 and
Shoshanah Jacobs
2
1
Department of Leadership Higher and Adult Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 1V6, Canada
2
Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada
3
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada
4
Department of Geography Environment and Geomatics, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada
5
School of Computer Science, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Trends High. Educ. 2025, 4(2), 19; https://doi.org/10.3390/higheredu4020019
Submission received: 31 October 2024 / Revised: 27 March 2025 / Accepted: 7 April 2025 / Published: 9 April 2025
Browse Figures
Versions Notes

Abstract

:
Given the rapidly changing job market in Canada and globally, there have been increasing calls to address the transferable skills gap between higher education graduates and the skills needed for the many new and changing jobs across the labour market. To investigate which fields of study in higher education in Canada produce graduates who go on to use more transferable skills on the job, we created an index of transferable skills use at work from several background questionnaire variables available in the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) in Canada survey. A series of four least squares linear regression models were used to examine the impacts of variables such as field of study and occupation type on this transferable skills index. Teacher training and education programs were found to have the highest scores on the transferable skills index, suggesting that these programs (and other professional programs) should be considered as a source of inspiration for how all programs can promote transferable skill development in their students. We also found a connection between transferable skill use and management roles within the workplace, suggesting that transferable skills are important factors in promotion to management roles.

1. Introduction

Rapid changes in global and Canadian society, brought about by megatrends such as globalization, social and demographic shifts, technological change, and geopolitical changes, are leading to rapid change in the labour market [1,2,3]. Some of the most in-demand skills for jobs in this changing labour market are transferable skills, also called foundational, generic, soft skills, or generic graduate attributes [4,5], that are needed in all sectors and workplaces. These include communication, critical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork, time management, organization, adaptability, and creativity [6]. While some of these skills are undoubtedly developed in some post-secondary programs, a growing body of research shows that these skills are not consistently and explicitly taught in all programs [4,6,7,8] leading to a growing skills gap between higher education programs and the workforce [9,10,11,12]. Given that students entering post-secondary programs expect these programs to build their skills and improve their future job prospects and that employers expect graduates to possess the skills needed to be effective employees [12,13,14,15], it is important to both the education sector and to our broader society that we understand this skills gap and how it manifests across different fields of study in higher education.
In Canada, the responsibility for higher education is constitutionally delegated to the provinces and territories, and so it is best described as the sum of 13 different provincial and territorial systems which vary widely in size and infrastructure, among other factors [16,17]. As a result, while other countries, (particularly Australia, the US, and the UK and other parts of Europe), have implemented national level mandates, recommendations, and initiatives to ensure that students gain these important transferable skills throughout their degree programs [18,19,20,21,22], Canada’s decentralized system has no such national mandate or strategy. Much of the conversation about transferable skills in Canadian higher education has been occurring within grey literature industry reports and news media, focusing on employer perspectives and complaints about how new graduates are not prepared for the workforce and lack these skills, e.g., [11,15,23,24]. While some provinces, such as Ontario and Alberta, have responded by implementing performance-based funding models to tie university funding to employment outcomes and other measures that are indirectly related to transferable skills [25,26], this has mostly led to tracking experiential learning opportunities, e.g., [27], not a focus on transferable skills in particular. Therefore, Canada lags behind these other countries in both studying and addressing the transferable skills gap, and there is substantial resistance from faculty who believe that these skills are not their responsibility [28]. As a result, any changes to Canadian curriculum related to transferable skills over recent decades has been patchy and inconsistent, largely dictated by the personal interest of individual faculty members or departments.
There is a robust body of research on differences in outcomes among fields of study in higher education [29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36]. Many of these studies have focused on the prestige of programs and on employment outcomes following graduation, e.g., [29,30] such that particular programs are often described as higher or lower value than others (due to differences in earnings, employment levels, or alignment with employment), for example: humanities vs. other programs [14,37] or STEM vs. non-STEM programs [38]. However, these broad groupings of fields of study can hide important nuances, making it difficult to make more detailed distinctions among programs [30].
Additionally, the research on skill acquisition differences between fields of study often focuses on just a few skills [39,40], or on only 1 level of degree program within a broad disciplinary category [41]. This study addresses the need for a more comprehensive investigation of transferable skills development across disciplines by using a large representative Canadian dataset to investigate the use of various transferable skills on the job and how this is impacted by higher education field of study.
Professional programs, such as education, engineering, nursing, and social work, all focus on specific careers and the skills needed for those jobs. They generally have practical/experiential learning components as part of the degree program or as a required step following graduation and before qualification to work in that career [42,43,44]. As a result, these programs may be more likely to meet both criteria for skills transfer: explicit skill instruction and opportunities to practice these skills in a disciplinary context [6,45,46].
We therefore hypothesize that professional programs, such as education, social work, and nursing, will result in more transferable skill development that applies to workplace situations (even when those individuals work in other occupational sectors). To test this, we created an index of transferable skill use on the job and investigated the impact of field of study and occupation on this transferable skill index. If this hypothesis is correct, we would expect to see higher scores on this transferable skill index among individuals who took professional fields of study in their higher education, compared to non-professional programs.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Source Data

The data for this analysis were taken from the publicly available microdata from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) in Canada survey (2012). The original sample, with 27,285 respondents, was sampled from a universe representative of the population of Canada.
PIAAC is an international assessment of “foundational information-processing skills required to participate in the social and economic life of advanced economies in the 21st century” [47] (para 1), administered to individuals aged 16–65 in OECD countries/regions [48]. The program’s focus is an in-depth assessment of three essential adult skills: literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving in technology-rich environments as building blocks for the development of higher-order skills. The PIAAC dataset was collected in Canada using in-home interviews from November 2011 to June 2012, and was composed of two parts: an extensive background questionnaire on the participants’ education, demographics, and work experience (which is the data source for this study) and the in-depth skills assessment [47]. To effectively capture Canada’s diverse population, a sample was collected that was significantly larger than for other countries participating in PIAAC [48]. Specific subpopulations (Indigenous peoples, immigrants, and official-language minorities) were oversampled to allow detailed analysis of these groups. All analyses included here are weighted to address this complex design and allow for analyses that would represent the Canadian population [49].
The sample used for this study included only those respondents aged 25–65, who had completed some form of higher education credential (college or university), were an employee (i.e., not self-employed), and were currently working at the time of the survey, for a total study sample size of 7367.

2.2. Dependent Variable

The dependent measure for this study was the transferable skill index which was created from a series of variables related to skills used at work from the background questionnaire. Twelve of these skills were identified as being aligned with the transferable skills groupings as defined by Hill et al. [6]: giving presentations, sharing work information, teaching, selling a product or service, organizing your time, planning your own activities, planning the activities of others, advising others, solving simple problems, solving complex problems, influencing others, and negotiating. All these variables refer to a current or most recent job and were collected on a 5-point scale of how often they were used at work, from 1 (never) to 5 (every day).
We used a confirmatory factor analysis (and varimax rotation) to confirm that all twelve skills fit together well into a single component [50,51]. The variables were combined by summation into a single scale as a measure of overall transferable skill use on the job, and the resulting scale has a Cronbach’s alpha score of 0.84, which is well above the 0.7 threshold to indicate good inter-item reliability [52]. This index measures the number of skills used and how often they were used at work, with a range of 12–60, where a score of 60 indicated that the respondent used each of these 12 skills every day at work.

2.3. Independent Variables

We used two variables related to education: field of study and years of education. Field of study is a categorical variable with nine categories: teacher training/education, social sciences/business/law, science/math/computing, humanities/languages/arts, engineering/manufacturing/construction, agriculture/veterinary, health/welfare, services, and general programs. The variable for the number of years of education attained is treated as continuous.
We included three work-related variables: occupational category, managing others, and years of work experience. The occupation category variable has eight categories: management, health-related, education/law/social/community/government, sales/service, art/culture/recreation/sport, natural & applied sciences, business/finance/administration, and other occupations. There is a binary variable for whether a respondent managed other employees at work and a quantitative variable for years of full-time work experience.
The sociodemographic variables included age, sex, whether the respondent was born in Canada, the country/region where they completed their higher education, Indigenous identity (self-identification as First Nations, Métis, or Inuit), disability or long-term illness, and the language of the survey (English or French).

2.4. Method of Analysis

Our statistical models were derived using least squares linear regression performed in Stata Version 17 [53]. The analysis consisted of four linear regression models where variables were added in stages. Model 1 included only the field of study in higher education to determine its impact on transferable skill use at work. Model 2 added the demographic variables. Model 3 included all the above variables plus the respondent’s current occupation and their years of full-time work experience. Finally, Model 4 added a variable capturing whether the respondent managed other employees. Dummy (0/1) coding was use for categorical variables, and the reference categories are identified in the regression table.

3. Results

3.1. Descriptive Statistics

Our dataset includes representation from a wide range of fields of study, occupational categories, and demographic groups (Table 1).
The transferable skills index is approximately normal, has a mean of 41.1, a median of 42, and a standard deviation of 9.8, (Table 2). Due to the specific sub-sample used for this study, the years of full-time work experience ranged from 0 to 40 years, the years of formal education ranged from 14 to 22 years (since all had completed a college and/or university credential), and the age of respondents ranged from 25 to 65 (Table 2).

3.2. Regression Models

Model 1: The field of study in higher education is a significant predictor of transferable skill index score, accounting for 4% of the observed variance in skills used at work (Model 1; Table 3). There is a significantly higher level of transferable skills used on the job between the reference group (someone who took education or teacher training), and those who studied in each of the other fields of study (p < 0.001). Figure 1 shows the predicted values of the transferable skills index for each field of study, across each of the four models. The values for Model 1 indicate that the highest transferable skills index score is found among those who took a teacher training/education program (score of 46.1), with all other field of study groupings being statistically significantly lower than this top group, with index scores ranging from 38.4 in General programs to 41.6 in the social sciences/business/law group.
Model 2 adds several sociodemographic variables, and accounts for 11% of the variance in index scores (p < 0.001; see Table 3). The effect of the field of study from Model 1 is still clear in this model, with the teacher training/education group having a significantly higher predicted index score than all other fields (45.6 compared to 38.9–41.4; Figure 1).
Model 2 reveals a statistically significant difference between males and females, where males report using more transferable skills on the job compared to females (p < 0.001; see Table 3), controlling for the other variables in the model. Country of birth also had a statistically significant impact on skill usage (p < 0.05), with respondents born in Canada having a higher index score than those born outside the country. Location of higher education was also important; while there was no significant difference between those educated in Canada and those educated in North America and Western Europe, there was a significant difference between those educated in Canada and those who completed their higher education program in another region of the world (p < 0.001). The survey language was also statistically significant (p < 0.001), whereby those who completed the survey in French reported lower use of transferable skills at work than those who completed the survey in English. There was no significant difference in index scores between Indigenous and non-Indigenous respondents or between respondents with and without a disability or long-term illness.
Among the quantitative variables in Model 2, the effect of the number of years of formal education was statistically significant (p < 0.001), with more years of total education leading to higher transferable skills use. Since the respondents in this study only included people with some level of higher education, this result refers to the effect of more years of higher education. Finally, the effect of age was not statistically significant (Table 3).
After including the workplace variables, Model 3 accounts for approximately 21% of the variance in transferable skills scores. This model had many similar results to Model 2, so we will only focus on the key differences between the models. Country of birth is no longer significant in this model. This model now has a significant negative effect for age (was non-significant in Model 2), with younger respondents reporting more transferable skills use than older respondents (p < 0.001).
The occupation sector variable is statistically significant, with careers in the management sector having the highest rate of transferable skills usage. This category is significantly higher than all the other categories (p < 0.001). Figure 2 shows the comparison of predicted skills index scores by occupational category: management occupations have the highest predicted scores at 46.1, health-related occupations at 43.2, and the education/law/social/community/government category at 43.2. The other four specific categories were statistically significantly lower than these top three (as evidenced by their non-overlapping confidence intervals), with scores ranging between 40.9 (sales and service) and 38.9 (business, finance, and administration). The other occupations group scored lowest at 35.5. The years of full-time work experience also had a significant impact, with more years of experience leading to higher transferable skills index scores (p < 0.001).
The final model, Model 4, accounts for 27% of the variance in scores (Table 3), adding the variable for whether respondents manage other employees at work. The overall results are very similar to Model 3; therefore, we will only discuss differences here.
The key difference in the occupation variables is that with the addition of the management roles variable, the education/law/social/community/government occupational category becomes the highest in the transferable skills index, along with management occupations and health-related occupations. Based on an examination of their confidence intervals, these three top fields are significantly different from all the other occupational categories (Figure 2).
Finally, holding a management role had a significant impact on skills index scores (Table 3). Those who manage other employees have significantly higher transferable skills scores compared to those who do not. The predicted index scores (Figure 3) are 44.9 for those with managerial roles and 39.1 for those who do not manage others.

4. Discussion

We contribute to the conversation around transferable skill development in higher education in Canada, specifically to identify which types of programs are associated with the most transferable skill development. The field of study that was associated with the highest score on the transferable skills index was education and teacher training. This finding was consistent across all four models, even when controlling for occupation, which indicates that this higher score is not driven by working in the educational sector and could indicate something about the training received in this field of study [54,55]. The research on conditions that promote transfer of skills from one context to another indicates that two main ingredients are needed for effective transfer: skills should be explicitly taught, and there should be ample opportunity for practice of these skills within relevant contexts [6,45,46]. Likewise, metacognition and reflection have also been shown to be important for effective transfer [56,57]. Likely, the combination of coursework and practicum experiences common to all teacher education programs in Canada [42], as well as the focus on reflective practice in these programs, would provide a learning environment with the right conditions for this skill development. However, more research will be needed to examine the transferable skill development of teacher candidates, e.g., [54,55], and the aspects of curriculum and practice in teacher training and education programs that are most closely tied to developing these skills, to test this finding more directly. Additionally, some of these differences between fields of study may also be attributable to students’ personalities [58,59], existing skill sets, or predispositions (for instance, to become a teacher [60,61,62]), rather than to their time in higher education. Future research using longitudinal data would be better equipped to capture this potential selection bias commonly associated with cross-sectional analyses.
Professional programs, such as education, medicine, social work, and engineering, all focus on specific careers and the skills needed for those jobs. These programs generally have practical/experiential learning components within real workplace environment as a key part of the degree program, e.g., [42,63]. Therefore, it is likely that participation in other professional programs beyond teacher training would include these same conditions to support the transfer of skill development. Unfortunately, these other professional programs could not be directly investigated in this study given the structure of the PIAAC dataset, so future research will be needed to investigate whether the same pattern is found in other professional programs beyond teacher training.
Unsurprisingly, the occupational sector that respondents worked in had a considerable impact on their scores on the transferable skills index. Management sector occupations, health related occupations and the education, law, social, community, government sector were consistently the highest in scores on the transferable skills index (see Figure 2). These three broad occupational categories may have certain characteristics in common, such as requiring substantial interpersonal interactions and working with teams, clients, or with the public. Therefore, these occupational sectors may select for individuals with more interpersonal transferable skills, as well as requiring the use of these skills regularly. Additionally, health-related fields include a range of graduates from professional programs (including medicine, nursing, and other allied health professionals), which also suggests that all professional programs (not just teacher training programs) deserve closer examination regarding how they include the development of these transferable skills.
Our study found that the length and location of higher education experiences impact transferable skill development, which suggests that Canadian higher education programs do play a role in this skill development. We found that participants who had more years of higher education later used more transferable skills at work. This could indicate that longer programs (such as undergraduate degrees compared to shorter non-degree programs) or completing multiple degrees or qualifications (which could include professional programs and graduate programs) are more effective at developing transferable skills. This aligns with Sinche and colleagues’ [41] finding that PhD graduates had attained or further developed a wide range of transferable skills during their programs. Additionally, this finding supports suggestions that professional programs in general may play an important role in supporting transferable skill development.
Similarly, our results on location of higher education suggest that there may be more transferable skill development occurring within Canadian higher education programs, compared to programs in some other parts of the world. Location of education has previously been linked to differences in rates of underemployment for immigrants in Canada, with immigrants who were educated in Canada (or in North America or Western/Northern Europe) having lower levels of underemployment [64] and we cannot overlook the socioeconomic and cultural factors that influence career pathway decisions [65,66,67,68]. This suggests that differences in higher education approaches and practices between North America/Western Europe and other regions of the world [69,70] may be related to transferable skill development which would increase employability. Together, these findings refute claims that higher education institutions in Canada are simply “degree factories” [11] (p. 34) that do not teach these important transferable skills.
Holding a management role at work had a major impact on the scores on the transferable skills index. The direction of causality for this finding is unknown—it could be that individuals who have stronger transferable skills are more likely to be hired and promoted to these management roles (these skills are certainly common in advertisements for these positions [7]), or people who take on management roles may need to use and develop transferable skills at a higher rate, regardless of their skill level before taking on this kind of role. Additionally, both processes may also be working simultaneously. Regardless, transferable skills are important to these management roles across occupational sectors [7,71]. This finding may motivate students to develop transferable skills that could help them rise to supervisory roles in their future workplaces.
This study found no significant differences in transferable skill index scores between Indigenous individuals or respondents who reported a disability and their majority counterparts in our final model. This finding lines up with another PIAAC analysis, which found that “[postsecondary education] attainment may serve to mitigate or even eliminate these differences” in skill levels between these minority groups and the majority of respondents [40] (p. 31). Since this current study focuses only on participants who completed some level of higher education, this may explain why no difference was found in this case. It should be noted that sparsely populated regions of Canada, as well as First Nations reserve populations, were excluded from the PIAAC dataset [48], so these findings on Indigenous participants may be more accurately interpreted as referring to Indigenous individuals who live in towns and urban areas, and therefore may not apply as accurately to Indigenous peoples living on reserves or in very small communities such as those in the far North. In terms of sample size, this 2% Indigenous participants is lower than the proportion of Indigenous people in Canada at the time of the survey (this proportion was 4.3% in 2011 [72]), which likely reflects both this sampling method and the relatively low rate of higher education participation by Indigenous people in Canada [73]. It is important to note that the complex data collection methods used by the PIAAC study, including the oversampling of specific subpopulations (including Indigenous people, immigrants and official language minorities) mentioned in Section 2.1 above, means that this small percentage is not a concern for data validity.

Limitations

The PIAAC dataset used here introduces some limitations, however, it still provides uniquely useful insight for our purposes. For example, the data were collected in 2012, so there could be concerns about it being outdated. However, given this study’s focus on how past educational experience may impact the use of skills at work, a more historical view is needed. While we cannot use this data to comment directly on current education-skill patterns, we do gain a broad view of patterns within and between fields of study, which we suspect would be fairly similar today. However, this is the most recent large-scale survey data on this topic currently available, particularly from a representative sample of Canadians, and this study provides a pre-COVID benchmark to which future research can be compared. We intend to conduct a follow-up analysis with the next round of PIAAC data (which was collected in 2022–2023), once these data are publicly available.
There were also no questions in the PIAAC questionnaire related to participation in co-op education programs (which are found in a wide range of fields of study in Canada [74]), which have a direct connection between higher education programs and the workforce, so it was not possible to examine the impact of those programs or compare their effectiveness with the other programs of interest. Similarly, it was not possible to determine if someone had multiple degrees or diplomas, or if anyone attended both college and university programs, which has been shown to impact labour market outcomes [75], so it is not possible to tell if this had any impact on the results.
We have provided evidence for transferable skill development occurring within higher education in Canada, however, this study does not provide any information on the consistency of transferable skills instruction in Canadian higher education institutions. Similarly, this study cannot distinguish whether these skills were taught intentionally and explicitly, or if they were simply learned along the way either within the classroom or through extracurricular experiences [7,8,76]. More direct research is needed into the ways in which transferable skills are currently being included within coursework in higher education settings, and whether more systematic or strategic approaches are needed to ensure students gain these skills.
Like all studies using secondary data, this study is also limited by the data collected using the PIAAC survey questions. We could not include all of the transferable skills (from those categories compiled by Hill et al. [6]), since we could only pick from the questions available. Therefore, some categories such as creativity, adaptability, and independence & initiative, were not included, and others may be over-represented. However, this imperfect index still provides valuable insight into the use of several of these skills. Additionally, this study only addresses self-reported use of transferable skills at work, not the total transferable skills that an individual has. Most people have skills that may not be relevant to their current jobs. Also, this study cannot speak to skill ability levels at all; for instance, a position may require daily oral communication, but not everyone in that position will be equally adept at oral communication skills. Therefore, more direct measures of transferable skills development during college and university in various fields of study will be needed to confirm these results.
Finally, the transferable skills index used here indirectly measures skills that may have been learned or further developed during higher education, so there is no guarantee that the transferable skills reported here were not learned via work experience or workplace training. We partially accounted for this by including the years of full-time work experience variable, which was associated with higher skills use at work, as we expected since individuals are likely to learn and develop transferable skills through experience on the job. Since field of study was still statistically significant even when this work experience variable was included, we are confident that field of study still has a meaningful impact on the use of these skills. However, we could not account for any workplace training or professional development using this dataset, so future research will be needed to investigate the role of both employee training programs and professional development on transferable skill use at work.

5. Conclusions

This study uses evidence from a large, representative sample of Canadians to investigate the role of field of study in higher education on the level of later use of transferable skills at work. Education and teacher training programs were found to be associated with the highest level of transferable skills use, according to the transferable skills use index. We argue that this finding is likely due to the structure of teacher training programs in Canada (which share key features with many other professional programs), which is well-suited to transferable skill development, and therefore these programs are worthy of further investigation. Additionally, we found that transferable skills use was also associated with holding a managerial or supervisory role at work, and that certain occupational sectors also demonstrated higher transferable skills use. This study also helps to refute claims that Canadian higher education institutions are only focused on providing credentials, and that they do not help students to develop these important skills [11]. This study is an important jumping off point for future investigations using a similar index of both the breadth and frequency of transferable skills use at work.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, C.E.B.M.; methodology, C.E.B.M. and D.W.; data curation, C.E.B.M. and D.W.; formal analysis, C.E.B.M.; investigation, C.E.B.M.; visualization, C.E.B.M.; writing—original draft preparation, C.E.B.M.; writing—review & editing, C.E.B.M., D.W. and S.J.; supervision, E.D.G.F., D.G. and S.J.; funding acquisition, E.D.G.F. and S.J. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the Canada First Research Excellent Fund—Food from Thought program, grant number 499155. The APC was also funded by this grant. Additional graduate student support was provided to C.E.B.M. by a scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

The data presented in this study were derived from the following resources available in the public domain: Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, 2012 [Canada], which is available from the Odesi database: odesi.ca.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Higheredu 04 00019 g001
Figure 1. Predicted transferable skills index scores by higher education field of study, in all 4 models. Error bars depict 95% confidence intervals.
Figure 1. Predicted transferable skills index scores by higher education field of study, in all 4 models. Error bars depict 95% confidence intervals.
Higheredu 04 00019 g001
Higheredu 04 00019 g002
Figure 2. Predicted transferable skills index scores by occupational category, in Models 3 and 4. Error bars depict 95% confidence intervals.
Figure 2. Predicted transferable skills index scores by occupational category, in Models 3 and 4. Error bars depict 95% confidence intervals.
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Higheredu 04 00019 g003
Figure 3. Predicted transferable skills index scores by whether the respondent manages other employees, in Model 4. Error bars depict 95% confidence intervals.
Figure 3. Predicted transferable skills index scores by whether the respondent manages other employees, in Model 4. Error bars depict 95% confidence intervals.
Higheredu 04 00019 g003
Table 1. Descriptive statistics of categorical independent variables (n = 7367).
Table 1. Descriptive statistics of categorical independent variables (n = 7367).
Categorical Independent VariablesPercentages
Field of Study—Highest Level Education
Teacher Training and Education11.28
Social Sciences, Business, & Law26.18
Science, Math and Computing14.32
Humanities, Languages and Arts9.47
Engineering, Manufacturing, and Construction17.02
Agriculture and Veterinary1.55
Health and Welfare12.02
Services4.81
General Programs3.34
Occupation Category (NOC System)
Management 14.27
Health related9.24
Education, law, social, community, government20.64
Sales and service12.07
Art, culture, recreation, and sport2.87
Natural and applied sciences, and related13.08
Business, finance, and administration16.82
Other Occupations11.02
Manage Other Employees
Yes35.32
No64.68
Sex
Male49.34
Female50.66
Country of Birth
Born in Canada69.46
Not Born in Canada30.54
Location of Higher Education Program
Canada80.13
North America & Western Europe5.39
All Other Regions14.48
Indigenous
Yes1.88
No98.12
Disability/Long-term Illness
Yes26.32
No73.68
Language of the Survey
English79.69
French20.31
Table 2. Descriptive statistics of quantitative and continuous variables.
Table 2. Descriptive statistics of quantitative and continuous variables.
Quantitative & Continuous VariablesMeanMedianModeStd Dev.MinMax
Dependent Variable
Transferable Skills Index41.1442459.771245
Independent Variables
Years of Fulltime Work in Lifetime17.73161010.68040
Years of Formal Education15.4816141.631422
Age 40–4430–34 2565
Table 3. Linear regression of higher education field of study on transferable skills use at work. Four models are included, where variables were added in stages (n = 7367).
Table 3. Linear regression of higher education field of study on transferable skills use at work. Four models are included, where variables were added in stages (n = 7367).
Transferable Skill
Use at Work		Model 1Model 2 Model 3Model 4
b Std. Err.Sigb Std. Err.Sigb Std. Err.Sigb Std. Err.Sig
Field of Study—Highest Level Education
Teacher Training and Education------------
Social Sciences, Business, & Law−4.4800.555***−4.1510.522***−3.7550.559***−4.2160.549***
Science, Math, and Computing−6.0140.626***−5.7350.615***−4.1570.660***−4.5750.647***
Humanities, Languages and Arts−5.2890.665***−4.8080.629***−3.3840.656***−3.5640.661***
Engineering, Manufacturing, and Construction−6.7010.655***−5.9670.684***−3.1150.741***−3.5150.707***
Agriculture and Veterinary−5.3291.308***−4.3361.274**−2.9381.031**−3.6080.916***
Health and Welfare−5.5680.726***−4.5450.687***−4.4090.825***−4.5960.817***
Services−6.3241.009***−4.9810.991***−3.7101.046***−4.2140.990***
General Programs−7.6921.336***−6.6661.364***−4.3751.333**−4.4261.213***
Sex
Male ---------
Female −1.4630.379***−1.2830.375**−1.1240.361**
Country of Birth
Born in Canada ---------
Not Born in Canada −1.3550.557*−0.3000.539n.s.−0.3300.509n.s.
Location of Higher Education
Canada ---------
N. America & Western Europe −0.1670.826n.s.−0.3630.765n.s.−0.2220.749n.s.
All Other Regions −4.7780.682***−4.2070.655***−3.7410.623***
Indigenous
Yes ---------
No 0.6180.704n.s.0.1490.735n.s.0.2070.699n.s.
Disability or Long-term Illness
Yes ---------
No −0.1670.406n.s.−0.2790.382n.s.−0.3250.368n.s.
Language of Survey
English ---------
French −1.8830.345***−1.5670.327***−1.4330.321***
Years of Higher Education
0.9570.103***0.6990.105***0.5330.104***
Age
0.1310.087n.s.−0.8480.155***−0.8370.148***
Years of Fulltime Work in Lifetime
0.2110.031***0.1910.030***
Occupation Category (NOC System)
Management ------
Health related −2.8280.834**−0.4060.813n.s.
Education, law, social, community, government −2.8880.552***0.4590.579n.s.
Sales and service −5.2100.631***−2.1810.639**
Art, culture, recreation, and sport −6.6371.078***−3.5571.035**
Natural and applied sciences, and related −6.7620.589***−3.9240.591***
Business, finance, & administration −7.1720.536***−4.1150.564***
Other occupations −10.5850.737***−7.9190.700***
Manage Other Employees
Yes ---
No −5.8920.354***
* p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01;
*** p < 0.001		R2 = 0.041R2 = 0.111R2 = 0.206R2 = 0.273
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Mishra, C.E.B.; Walters, D.; Fraser, E.D.G.; Gillis, D.; Jacobs, S. Higher Education Fields of Study and the Use of Transferable Skills at Work: An Analysis Using Data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) in Canada. Trends High. Educ. 2025, 4, 19. https://doi.org/10.3390/higheredu4020019

AMA Style

Mishra CEB, Walters D, Fraser EDG, Gillis D, Jacobs S. Higher Education Fields of Study and the Use of Transferable Skills at Work: An Analysis Using Data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) in Canada. Trends in Higher Education. 2025; 4(2):19. https://doi.org/10.3390/higheredu4020019

Chicago/Turabian Style

Mishra, Christine E. B., David Walters, Evan D. G. Fraser, Daniel Gillis, and Shoshanah Jacobs. 2025. "Higher Education Fields of Study and the Use of Transferable Skills at Work: An Analysis Using Data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) in Canada" Trends in Higher Education 4, no. 2: 19. https://doi.org/10.3390/higheredu4020019

APA Style

Mishra, C. E. B., Walters, D., Fraser, E. D. G., Gillis, D., & Jacobs, S. (2025). Higher Education Fields of Study and the Use of Transferable Skills at Work: An Analysis Using Data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) in Canada. Trends in Higher Education, 4(2), 19. https://doi.org/10.3390/higheredu4020019

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