Between
last week and this week, thousands of graduates will be joining the rest of
their colleagues that graduated in the past years to compete for the few jobs
available.
The
new graduates will be entering a job market that has since changed. Gone are
the days when having a university degree was an automatic gate-pass to
employment, complete with good pay, a residential house and sometimes a
chauffeur driven company or government car.
Those
were the days when Makerere University had the monopoly in university education
and obtaining an admission to Makerere was as good as one getting a well paying
job. Students would be booked by companies even before completing their courses
or while still awaiting graduation.
The
liberalization of higher education sector in Uganda has however seen marked
increase in university graduates whose number surpasses the demand of the job
market. Things have since changed in this era that graduates need to think
outside the box in order to survive in the hostile job market.
The introduction
of private sponsorship scheme in higher education institutions and the
mushrooming public universities has led to a remarkable increase in the number
of graduates coming out of universities every year.
It
is also important to note that while the dynamics of the job market has since
changed, requiring new skills and approaches to problem solving at the work
place, university curricular and the overall education system in Uganda has
remained stagnant, stuck to the British colonial system. The end product is
that there is a mismatch between the skills that the graduates have and the
demands of the job market.
Economic
interest seems to have overridden academic interest in the design of new
courses by some of the universities. Emphasis is put on courses that attract
more students, leading to duplication and splitting of courses.
The
poor pay lecturers in these universities get has also worsen the situation,
leading them to concentrate on consultancy work at the expense of research. The
end product of it all is the poor quality of graduates who cannot compete
favorably in the job market.
Therefore,
after the euphoria of partying and celebrating the completion of one academic
milestone in their lives have waned, majority of graduates will then be struck
with the reality of unemployment.
The
most important question that every graduate should be asking him or herself is
not what their degrees can do for them, but rather, what they can do with the
degrees that they have acquired. They will be confronted with realities that
require change of tact and mindset if they are to succeed.
