Influence of student-faculty interaction on graduate outcomes of undergraduate management students: The mediating role of behavioral, emotional and cognitive engagement

Student-faculty interaction is a key to career decision self-efficacy, self-perceived employability, and student satisfaction in higher education. Empirical evidence that examines the influence of student-faculty interaction and graduate outcomes among business students from a developing country's perspective is missing where the current study attempts to fill this knowledge gap. This research explains the influence of student-faculty interaction on their graduate outcomes. The study also establishes the mediating role of behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement on students' graduate outcomes. This study analyzes survey responses of 921 undergraduate business students from the four major universities of Nepal using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Results indicate that student-faculty interaction significantly improves self-perceived employability and student satisfaction while failing to influence career-decision self-efficacy. The behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement mediates the relationship between student-faculty interaction and students' graduate outcomes. However, only emotional engagement mediates all three relationships. Our findings indicate that developing countries' HEIs need to introduce career-related interventions, market orientation, and develop instructors to improve student learning and graduate outcomes.