NIGERIAN GRADUATES AND UNEMPLOYABILITY: WHICH WAY FORWARD? by Daniel Chimezie
Unemployment remains
one of the most teething problems in the World. Although, it affects all age
groups, its impact on the youth population is particularly vicious. In the
past, most young people in Nigeria had easy access to white-collar jobs after
their education but it is no longer the case today as the high level of
graduate unemployment shows that education is no longer an immunity to
unemployment in Nigeria.
GRADUATE
UNEMPLOYMENT IN NIGERIA.
Graduate
unemployment has assumed an unfortunate dimension in recent times as more
graduates are being churned out of our tertiary institutions without having
access to jobs. In 2011, the composite unemployment rate for graduates of tertiary institutions
stood at 24.6% for first degree graduates, 13.7% for Master’s Degree holders
and 17.8% for doctoral graduates (National Planning Commission, 2011). Taking
cognizance of the fact that most of the so-called employed graduates are
actually under-employed makes the whole picture of graduate unemployment in
Nigeria more pathetic.
NIGERIAN
GRADUATES AND EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS.
Many people have
argued that the high rate of graduate unemployment in Nigeria is not only as a
result of the unavailability of jobs but also the fact that most of our
graduates lack basic employability skills and are therefore not employable. The
unemployability of Nigerian graduates has been blamed on several factors. Chief
among these factors is our poor curriculum system which has been criticized for
not only lacking in content and quality, but is largely theoretical, stagnant
and not tailored to market needs. Other factors usually mentioned include the
poor learning environment in our educational institutions, the poorly trained
teachers and the poor commitment of students to developing themselves. All
these lead to poor learning outcomes amongst graduates and employers are
usually very reluctant to commit resources to training and re-training such
graduates since they might switch services to a competitor any day.
THE COST OF
GRADUATE UNEMPLOYMENT.
The
unemployability of Nigerian graduates effectively drains the reputation capital
of our economy in general and our educational system in particular. As a matter
of fact, the mere notion that our graduates are unemployable puts a question
mark on the efficiency of our national expenditure on education and training
and the actual benefit of schooling.
Moreover, not
only does the problem of graduate unemployability retard the competitiveness of
our graduates in the 21st century global knowledge market, we are
incurring very high national productivity losses as a result of the near
‘vegetative’ state of what should actually serve as our high-level manpower.
In the same vein, as the unemployability
problem increases the rate of graduate unemployment; it poses a risk to the
stability of society when these graduates resort to anti-social and criminal
behavior to ‘help’ themselves.
IMPROVING ON THE EMPLOYABILITY OF NIGERIAN GRADUATES
The high cost associated with graduate
unemployability makes it imperative for measures to be taken to improve the
employability of our graduates. There should not only be increased funding of education across all levels to improve the learning environment and the quality
of teachers (by way of training and re-training), measures should be put in
place to overhaul our curriculum system
to not only reflect dynamism but focus on market needs and emphasize
entrepreneurship
The Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme
(SIWES) in our tertiary institutions should be overhauled to work better and
should be extended to all fields of study to enable all students have a
first-hand experience of how their industry works and know what skills are
required to function effectively in such industries. The SURE-P Graduate
Internship Scheme (GIS), a scheme which is like a stop-gap measure to improve
the employability skills of existing graduates should be expanded to cover more
grounds. Most importantly, students themselves should be committed to personal
development by expending their resources on commercial and marketable skills
and not on frivolities and a lot needs to be done to enlighten them in this
regard.
Since
the unemployability of Nigerian graduates effectively drains the reputation
capital of our economy in general and our educational
system in particular, all hands must therefore be on deck to work towards
repositioning our educational system to produce graduates that can compete
effectively in the 21st century global knowledge market.
