The Role of Employability Skills in Agricultural Students Educational Motivation in Imam Khomeini Higher Education Center, Iran

Student's educational motivation and concerns for future job are interlocked and higher education institutions play a vital role in this issue. In align with this issue current empirical research focused on employability skills as an inner driver for agricultural students’ educational motivation. Statistical population was composed of 230 of agricultural students at Imam Khomeini Higher Education Center in Alborz Province, Iran from that 144 students were selected based on Krejcie and Morgan table and through stratified sampling. The research instrument was a questionnaire that its face validity and its reliability were secured prion to the main data collection phase (Ordinal Theta ranged from 0.81 to 0.91). Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and binary logistic regression were the prime statistical methods applied by SPSS 23. Factor analysis showed that student's educational motivation is detected in six dimensions including; motivation and innovation, motivation and professional base, emotional motivation, financial incentive motivation, motivation to learn and motivation to get the degree. Also, motivation and innovation were the most variance extracted in these dimensions. The results of logistic regression analysis showed that student's educational motivation is dependent to some dimensions of employability including leadership skills. Hence, curriculum concentration on leadership skills could result in student's educational motivation and achievement.