Emergency Remote Teaching during COVID-19 Pandemic: Students’ Perceptions on their Labour Market Requisite Skills

University graduates’ competencies and skills have been of interest to higher education accreditation agencies, academicians, researchers and the workplace. Hence, higher education institutions are expected to produce employable graduates who possess refined team work skills, know the theoretical foundations of their major, have acquired the necessary vocational and entrepreneurial skills, can assess their own work and that of others, can provide sound feedback and make rationally informed decisions. Such skills are critical for today’s university graduates and for the labour market’s employability. Nevertheless, the unannounced arrival of COVID-19 disease has turned things upside down and forced unprepared universities to transition to remote teaching (RT). This study used a survey to ask learners about their perceptions of their readiness for future work or studies. Furthermore, the research investigates whether online learning equips graduating students with the employability skills that the labour market requires or not. Results show that the students tend to have very low mean of readiness for future work or studies, which is found to be between 1.4601 and 1.6453 at 5% level of error. This indicates that the students tend to view remotely taught courses as not equipping them with the sufficient labour market requisite skills. Findings imply that students from different colleges have varient medains of readiness for future work or studies. Moreover, respondents’ academic levels (freshman, sophomore, junior, etc.) show significant bearings on the students’ perceptions. Results draw attention to the challenges surrounding the technical and the conceptual knowledge that students are gaining during the pandemic due to emergency RT. Hence, this study provides educators and decision makers with practical suggestions as regards how to support learners to overcome their perceived concerns. The research concludes with limitations and suggestions for further studies.