Must Read : "Education and Employability" Adekeye Victor Writes

Education and Employability

Vacancy vacancy vacancy.... Minimum of three to five years of experience... Questioning this "joke", how does a company that wants to hire an employee expect a graduate that just completed his/her youth service to have such wealth of experience? With assumption that he/she has it, was it not from a work place (probably former) he/she would get it? With these questions, conclusion could be arrived at that such job and the likes of the opportunities is not meant for the fresh graduates. Could it just be that only the latent function of education is the gain of all the years, time and resources spent in schooling for more than average citizens in the country? What have we to show for the manifest function?

     Curriculum of education has major role in this issue. Before a curriculum of education in a country can be planned, it takes several agents to partake in it to come to a success. With this been said, countries that are doing well educationally and also developmentally can be said to have properly plan their curriculum with the necessary agents needed. Major stakeholders in planning a curriculum should be more than just parents, government etc., but emphasis should be placed on stakeholders like professionals and experts which have 'what and what' that are needed in the world of work. Having put this in place, the planning can be done in accordance with what the current age needs so as to move at advancing pace. If what companies and industries out there in the world of work would be needing can not be found in at most 80% of Nigerian graduates, then education is said to have failed the people in the nation because it is of these reasons we have it and the blames be casted on the planners.

     It is no news again that average Nigerian youth is not employable when it comes to formal education certification, which is why most companies (the little we have) would rather request for those that have experience. It is surprising to see companies employing uneducated labour worker because of his/her skills (though it might be with little pay). What now is the essence of the whole schooling process if at the end one cannot easily come out to demonstrate what skill(s )has been learnt?  The lucky ones that are gainfully employed by private sectors have something that is hard to find in others like them to offer which makes them different, which is termed professional skills. A vehicle repairer is at times better off engineering graduate in the society which we find ourselves or rather create for ourselves. A look into the real world, people are acquiring skills that they didn't learn in/from school and using these skills to make ends meet. How much more if these could be planned to take place in the education curriculum, won't there be progress?  If intense experience is what is needed, why can't the curriculum be tailored towards that?

Hardly can one come across  IT 'gurus" that were made in/from the system of education the nation is running, yet we have these guys out there that sourced for this knowledge on their own, what then is the purpose for paying to acquire a formal education?

      On a concluding note,since education is compulsory in the country, it is imminent and needing that the system of education be restructured in a way that graduates can actually posses the needed and required skills to face the world and also fend for themselves. Having spending time and other resources on acquiring knowledge about in a field, getting certified  and not being worthy of such certification in comparison with developed Nations' standard and at the same time not employable, this is a pointer that the needed knowledge was not transmitted for acquisition to take place.

From the desk of vEc

Adekeye, Victor Gbolahan