THERE was a time in the history of this country when companies and organisations as well as the public service took career counselling and recruitment for graduate entrants to the universities, presenting their various functions and jobs on offer. Through those “Company Open Days” on campuses, organisations were looking to attract the skills they were looking to target as management trainees.
ADMITTEDLY, with the mushrooming of private universities and colleges, “Open Days” have almost become extinct as more and more graduates are churned out each year to chase very few jobs. At the same time, too, the public sector which is the biggest employer, placed a ban on employment. The few jobs in the private sector therefore, could not go round to absorb all the graduates that came out from both our public and private universities, to the extent that each year, we have a spill-over of graduates looking for jobs.
UFORTUNATELY, over the years, not many news jobs have been created whether in the private or public sectors to the extent that for the first time in the country’s history, we have been confronted with the phenomenon called graduate unemployment and even have an association of unemployed graduates.
TODAY thinks this is a collective failure that needs to be corrected. An educational system that trains and builds entrepreneurial skills is where we should put our emphasis as a country.
IT is therefore imperative that we focus some attention on training programmes in our tertiary institutions, so as to ensure that the people we train meet not only the requirements of the job market but also have the skills to go into creating their own jobs and offering employment to others. Entrepreneurship is the way to get us out of graduate unemployment.
TODAY believes that tailoring our educational needs to promote development is within our capability. We have the people and we have the resources. What is critical is the passion and drive of the people to make things happen.
ENOUGH has been said about building a much stronger and vocational and technical training and linking same to the job market. At the same time, our tertiary institutions must begin to shift to programmes of study that would not only provide ready employment but also accelerate the pace of the country’s development.
TODAY believes that the time has come for the government and other stakeholders to harness opportunities that are offered by our educational institutions and help build a skillful labour force that is needed to turn the country’s fortunes around in the shortest possible time.
THIS is because education holds the key to development, but if it is not properly harnessed, the products of education can pose a threat to the security and stability of society if society fails to find jobs for its trained hands, the devil will do so. We should not allow such a tragedy to befall us.
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