Mr. President, Should Unemployed Graduates Be Thus Condemned?

The just ended media interaction with the President of the country on the first anniversary of his stewardship has proven beyond doubt the fact that the President has simply no clue as to how to create jobs for unemployed graduates.

Even though I think the event was a wasted opportunity for journalist to interrogate the President on important issues concerning the country in the areas of education, health, energy, community development, infrastructure and employment, a few journalists brought up important issues worthy of public attention. One such issue is with regards to the situation of graduate unemployment which forms a crucial part of the unemployment equation and made major headlines in the lead up to the 2012 general elections.

In fact, it is an honor of great prestige for one to form a part of the class of people who obtain tertiary education in a developing country like ours and more so, to be part of the class of people with the highest qualifications in the country. After secondary education, it is the pride and wish of every Ghanaian student to enroll in one of the nation’s public universities considering the prestige that comes with it and the opportunities that one can imagine with a qualification of being a graduate.

According to the tertiary education division of the Ministry of Education, there are only 9 public universities in the country with over 25 outlets operating as private universities. With this number and considering the number of students who complete their secondary education from the over 400 Senior High Schools in the country, gaining admission into any of the public universities is no mean achievement. The magnitude of the crumble for university education is that huge considering the fact that the University of Ghana alone rejected about 39,645 qualified applicants who sought admission to pursue both graduate and undergraduate programs in the 2013/2014 academic year.

Apart from the difficulty in obtaining admission due to the huge demand for university education, the other difficulty is of rising costs of university education. These costs are a combination of fees and levies as well as accommodation and feeding expenditure. And so, it is undeniable that the demand for university education has grown disproportionately.

Nonetheless, university education is still the option for 7 out of every 10 high school graduates nationwide. After all, the difficulty in obtaining the degree points to the value of the degree itself either as a measure of self-actualization or a green card to a better job.

However, the challenge of unemployment among university graduates cannot be denied as more and more students turn out wearing the gown each year.

The situation is that the number of graduates each year is just too huge for the state to contain with respect to the kind of jobs befitting their qualifications. It is now estimated that over 100,000 graduates are produced by the country’s universities each and every year. Absorbing such numbers into the public sector is definitely not acceptable as it creates a recipe for fiscal disaster in a country that is still developing and has already got a majority of the labor force in the formal sector.

Also, the curricula of the various universities in the country are at serious variance with the available job prospects that the informal sector can produce. This reaches an unthinkable point for some graduates who must descend from their high first class degrees to perform duties they will suitably describe as befitting basic school leavers.

It is not a secret that most of the courses on offer in the nation’s public universities are social science related with just a few focused on technical aspects of the nation’s development. Even the technical courses such as engineering are studied as thought courses ranging from little to no practical activity resulting in graduates who are perfect with descriptive capabilities and zero practical knowledge.

Moreover, the springing up of private universities in the country has resulted in a duplication of the problems generated by the public universities. With their huge number and the nature of their motives, less attention is paid to the quality of graduates produced and the needed investments in practical equipment to facilitate technical training. This compounds the problem of creating an irrelevant human resource base for the job market.

However, the main reason for governance is to take the challenges and difficulties of the state and turn same into opportunities necessary for the development of the country. This is because if there were perfect conditions in every country, the need for governments will not simply arise.

Therefore, it is disheartening that in an effort to address pressing national concerns on the occasion of the first anniversary of the President’s assumption of office; the same blames the educational system for the problem of graduate unemployment without stating any measure his government is putting in place to address it thereby exposing his clueless ability to addressing the situation. Be as it were, this same problem is a creation of the wasteful thinking of successive governments on the educational system of the country. The President is now identifying a problem that his very self is now contributing to compound in the wake of his efforts to establish yet another public university.

Addressing joblessness in the economy, he talks about a freeze on new contracts and then again, the commissioning of infrastructural projects which will churn out job opportunities for artisans in the construction sector. What pure contradiction. In any case, will such projects last forever? But listening to the President, one will hear the construction of roads, schools, gas projects, afforestation projects and similar others which in his opinion are his government’s efforts to create jobs for the people of this country. The question one will naturally ask is as to whether these are the jobs his government is creating for all unemployed persons in the country including university graduates after having placed an indefinite ban on employment in the sector.

To many, the educational system of the country needs to be addressed seriously in order to tailor the curriculum towards the real job market of the country’s economy. But what needs to be done is not to just create technical courses for students to study and get out into the informal job market as the President is proposing; but a conscious effort to provide the industrial superstructure that will form the basis for training and absorbing technically minded graduates whose work will be to the benefit of the country.

What governments in Ghana have assumed is a condition whereby the state has the duty to provide educational institutions as a platform through which its citizens obtain an education. If we continue to think that the state has no further responsibility in a country as less developed as ours after offering a platform for educating citizens, then we are bound to hit a crisis situation that will not only destabilize the economy but the political authority of the state itself as examples abound in North Africa and the Middle East.

Therefore, what I propose is an educational system that trains citizens in technical courses of interest to the nation not in the classroom of a university but in an industrial set-up created by the state. In this case, the vision of the nation’s first President, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, in the creation of several small scale industries must be brought back. What we will then do is to attach these industries which will specialize in various activities the country has comparative advantage in to the various educational institutions such as the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. This will ensure that the practical training desired of students in the various technical courses in our institutions is guaranteed them in these industries.

In this case, we will as a country, have a varied number of technically based tertiary institutions as well as industries directly linked up. The advantage then is that, our students will form the needed workforce in these industries while these industries will form the appropriate practical environment for training and absorbing them.

Should the state embark on an educational system of this nature at the higher level, the country will witness a likely springing up of industrial activity leading up to the industrial expansion of this country. With this in mind, the question is that of whether the government will be committed to any project of the sort considering the fact that the President’s responses to questions on his one year in office seems to suggest a government that is not ready to take a task that is of strategic importance to the country in the long term but one focused on fulfilling little electoral promises to individuals and groups. This is also coupled with the fact that successive governments have embarked upon selling the very industries that will form the breeding ground for job opportunities in the informal sector.

Whatever the case might be, the President should have it at the back of his mind that no situation in the country he presides over can be sidelined or dodged for the sake of convenience. The problem of graduate unemployment is one that is connected with the security and future of the state and every step, every idea as well as every minute must be counted in to address it to assure the youth of Ghana of a sense of nationhood.

By David Azuliya

Mobile: 0505005012

Email: [email protected]