International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) |Volume IV, Issue VIII, August 2020|ISSN 2454-6186 www.rsisinternational.org Page 831 The Comparison Life and Career Skills among Premier, Conventional and Metro Polytechnics Students in Malaysia Nurhanim Saadah Abdullah 1 , Sri Sumarwati 2* , Azidah Abu Ziden 3 , Nordin Abd Razak 4 , Mohd Ismail Abd Aziz 5 1,2,3,4,5 University Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Parit Raja 86400, Batu Pahat, Johor, Malaysia. *Corresponding Author Abstract: The 21st Century education requires a holistic transformation in terms of infrastructure, knowledge, and teaching strategies that encourage a more complex thinking process. Life and career skills are essential to both learning and work in the 21st century. The purpose of this study is to determine the difference between life skills and career skills of flexibility and adaptability, initiative and self-directed skills, social skills and cross-cultural skills, productivity and accountability, responsibility, and leadership, between Polytechnic students in Malaysia. This study used a quantitative research approach. The respondents consisted of 527 students at the Polytechnic diploma in Malaysia, which is determined using stratified random sampling. Data was collected using a questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed by t-test and ANOVA using SPSS version 21. The results of this study show that there is a significant difference between the flexibility and adaptability skills possessed by the students in different types of polytechnics in Malaysia. However, this study found that there is no significant difference between the initiative and self-direction skills, social and cross-cultural skills, productivity and accountability skills, responsibility, and leadership skills possessed by the students in different types of polytechnics in Malaysia. Therefore, researchers suggest that future researchers explore other critical elements of Work Readiness with 21st- century skills for polytechnic students in Malaysia. Keywords: 21st Century Education, Life and career skills, transferable skills, TVET. I. INTRODUCTION iving in the 21st century with the ever-changing working environments due to the dynamic economy, the biggest challenge that people will strive for a living is securing a job. One needs to have the skills that employers need to get a job (Ismail et al., 2019; Sumarwati, Yunos & Ibrahim, 2017; Pool & Sewell, 2007). However, the scenario facing the global world is that employers find it difficult to hire suitable and competent employees (Robinson, 2000). The ideal perception of students studying in higher educational institutions is getting a suitable job after graduation. Therefore, students need to have life and career skills to be able to have high marketability and to face various career challenges in the future. The skills for 21st Century comprise life and career skills, learning, and innovation skills and information, media, and technology skills. All the skills are important for the workers of the 21st century. Specifically, to identify the skills that are important for the development of the 21st-century workforce is the skill of life and career skills. The elements of the skills consist of five key components that are flexibility and adaptability, initiative and self-direction, social and cross- cultural skills, productivity and accountability, and leadership and responsibility (Trilling & Fadel, 2009). Unemployment is one of the problems faced by many countries. One of the factors of unemployment is the existence of the skill gap possessed by graduates with the skills desired by employers. Various research reports show that there is a problem of unemployment due to the gap in skills among existing human resources. Therefore, educational institutions are responsible for paying more attention to improving the quality of skills of graduates. (Daniels & Brooker, 2014; Fong, Sidhu, & Fook, 2014). However, higher educational institutions have taken many initiatives to cater to this issue. The Ministry of Education Malaysia has taken steps to improve education towards fulfilling the criteria of the fully developed country, which is The National Higher Education Strategic Plan (NHESP) that consists of 23 critical agenda projects (CAPs). All the CAPS are contiguous to the Malaysian Government Transformation Programme (GTP) and Malaysian Economic Transformation Programme (ETP), which are the progress of the Malaysian government towards Vision 2020. Employers nowadays seek employees who possess the appropriate skills to be employed. Life and career skills are essential to both learning and work in the 21st century. It is important both in local and international careers. As in the local context, polytechnics are one of the main technical and vocational education and training (TVET) institutions in Malaysia that aims to produce the workforce to meet industrial needs. Currently, Malaysia has produced three types of polytechnics namely Premier polytechnics, METrO polytechnic, and Conventional polytechnic (Department of Polytechnic Studies, 2014). In addition to understanding the real situation, the researcher has made an initial interview with two polytechnic students L