Optional Courses to Enhance Employability in Higher Education: An Experience of the Curriculum Change in a Centralized Education System

The study aims to reflect the lived experiences of professors and curriculum specialists about the functions and challenges of optional courses in the higher education curriculum. The impetus behind this study was to enhance the employability of undergraduate students. To fulfill this purpose, the qualitative research method was used to gather the data on participants’ lived experiences. For this purpose, the participants were selected through the purposeful snowball sampling method. The data were collected through individual interviews. The themes related to the function of implementing optional courses in the curriculum included enhancing technical and core competencies, facilitating employment, enriching the curriculum, interdisciplinary functions, the emergence of multiple identities in students, and attention to social needs. The results of the research on the challenges of incorporating optional courses into the higher education curriculum fell into two major categories: development challenges and implementation challenges including: resistance to curriculum changes, an imbalance between main and optional courses, misperception of optional courses, expanding the curriculum and its threat to the field identity, and an accurate needs assessment of optional courses. The second category of challenges included four dimensions: lack of departmental accountability, constraints of financial resources, disregard for teaching value, and weak inter-/intra-university communications. Despite the changes in the curriculum, the lack of serious attention to the development and implementation of optional courses has created a gulf between the university and society. Therefore, some reforms in the curriculum structure to facilitate students’ employability seem necessary.