One of the important tasks of higher education in recent years is the transformation of employability skills in students in relation to different theoretical viewpoints such as economic, human, social capitals. Economic capital is the money in our bank accounts; human capital is the talent in our heads; and social capital is our relationships with each other and the community. Social capital is a term used to refer to how people in a community form connections, relationships and social networks with each other for common purposes. Universities also become more important since university play a pivotal role in producing cultural capital. Cultural capital should function through social capital by employment (where the owner of economical capital employs the owner of cultural capital like an engineer) and by other exchanges which are patterns of social capital. Universities are basic and important places for these social exchanges. For example, social networks are methods of making functional the cultural capital through social capital. Furthermore, current economic changes, including the changing nature of work (from patterns of mass production to flexible production) have shown the importance of social capital more than human capital.

The aim of this article is to study the need to consider employability skills, based on suppositions of social capital theory, for planning development of higher education in Iran. The study also investigates the skills based on the social capital theory among students and the dimensions of social capital in Iran (trust, reciprocity, volunteering, and civic participation). It studies the relationships between dimensions of social capital and some background variables such as gender, level of education, and social class. A survey approach was used and included questions covering all the elements related to social capital. Students in the university of Mazandaran, in north of Iran, were included in the target sample. A total of 1800 respondents participated in the survey. Data was organized and inputted into SPSS. Mostly descriptive statistics are generated for the current presentation.

Research results, there are two patterns of production. First, in the pattern of mass production (Fordist period), which is based on the human capital, fixed skills will be emphasized. Second, in the pattern of flexible skills (Post-Fordist period), that is based on social capital, flexible skills are considered. In this pattern different skill like trust, increase of social undertaking, multiple skills, work environment humanizing, group participation are also important to transfer to labour force. This paper discusses some questions about the importance and quality of employability skills formation based on the theoretical foundations of human and social capital theory. It also argues that key skills are very important in higher education. But special features of key skills are emphasized because of the vision of higher education planners, who pursue a human capital theoretical vision during periods of expansion in the higher education sector. Therefore, with considering to new current economic situation, human capital vision has lost its efficiency for higher education planning. Social capital has substituted with special suppositions. Employability skills training in higher education have a separate position in social capital. Hence, higher education centers need to think deeply about contents, position, efficiencies and quality of key skills training for constituting social capital. In fact, Iranian universities need to provide the necessary situations for key skills learning through utilizing propounded theories and patterns related to social capital. Thus this paper is going to consider the suppositions of social theory and its usage as social-economy requirements. Doubtless, the link between higher education and social capital content should be sought by identifying new transferable key skills in the training process.