Predicting Employability Readiness in Bangladesh The Role of Digital Skills and Practical Exposure in Sustainable Workforce Development

Bangladesh is currently experiencing a swift growth in higher education enrollment; however, it raises doubts about whether students have the necessary skills to succeed in future workforce. The research investigates how three educational factors: curriculum relevance and practical exposure and digital skill development affect employability readiness of university students in Bangladesh. Primarily, data was collected by using a structured questionnaire, distributed among 205 university students of varying years, institutions and genders. Data analysis was conducted through descriptive statistics, reliability testing with Cronbach's alpha, correlation analysis, chi-square testing and multiple regression analysis in SPSS software. The results show that participants achieved moderate overall readiness because they scored 3.22 out of 5. Digital skills proved to be the strongest factor, determining employability readiness because they had a value of .502 and p<.001. It also found that curriculum relevance did not function as a separate independent variable because here, p=0.060. The model achieved 43% of employability readiness variance because its R² value is approximately .43. Digital skills had a strong positive relationship with employability readiness because the correlation coefficient reached .599 and the p<.01. Perceived skill gaps had a negative impact on job-market confidence because the correlation coefficient reached -.281 and p<.01. This study establishes digital skills and practical exposure as essential factors which determine employability readiness because of its findings which show an R² value of approximately .43. This result directly supports Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), which focuses on developing human capital that will sustain economic growth through permanent employment.