This paper presents a review of literature on the challenges and obstacles to the development and implementation of generic competencies in higher education over the past two decades. In particular, it discusses the lack of institutional and curriculum support, the lack of clarity about the definition of generic competencies and the issues with teaching pedagogy and assessment of these generic competences.
Among other, this paper demonstrates that teaching pedagogy, curriculum and students' experience and learning strategy are currently not aligned to ensure the adoption of a systematic approach to developing generic competencies.
Given that the majority of students are not going to remain in the research sector, a number of universities around the world, particularly research-intensive universities, have come to realise the lack of practical or real world experience among their teaching staff which has disadvantaged their students as work-ready graduates.
Although there has been improvement in the last 20 years such as the inclusion of generic competencies in most universities’ mission statements, it would be such a sloppy move if we have to wait for another 20 years for these competencies to be formally implemented and properly integrated into the curriculum.