Hello everyone, it's been a while. I have been out of town and
very busy trying to get some things going. The reality of our hustle. Hope you
are all doing good and enjoyed the
holiday.
holiday.
So over the
weekend I was reading a couple of things about the Nigerian education sector
and since schools just closed I had the opportunity
to talk to some of my young friends, nieces and nephews who are still in
school.
How many of us
thought when we were young and back in school, how important what we were doing
was. I love education, I love a chance to learn new things and I have the kind
of mind that hardly ever forgets. Not that I was always first in my class
or something but I was a good student, and I thought what I was learning will
change the world. Matter of fact is that
it didn't. most of the things that I actually use in my life now are things I
learned outside the strictures of the formal education system.
How is it that Nigerian
graduates amount to about 1.8 million people a year and you still hear Nigerian
employers talking about Nigerian graduates being unemployable. I was with a
couple of friends in Lagos who have their own businesses and one of them was
ranting about how he interviewed 7 new graduates for some entry level jobs in
his firm and none of them could even pass muster. To tell the truth I was a bit
annoyed, I was in the Nigerian unemployment market for a while and it's not that I wasn't good enough it's just the reality of that
circumstance and it offends me when I hear potential employers say stuff like
this. He then went on to say how he will only employ Nigerians who have had an
education outside Nigeria. It is true that some graduates are a very big
disappointment and you don't even want to hear what they have to offer (
working in HR I know this first hand) but we have very wonderful Nigerian trained
and ready to learn graduates too, and is Nigeria the only country where being
educated outside our shores is an added advantage? to be honest how many Nigerians
can afford this luxury?
In school you are
taught a lot of subjects that are so removed from reality it makes it difficult
sometimes to find real life application. In university I was an economics
undergrad and most of the theories are based on the assumption of "all things being equal". In real
life outside of the utopia of education, all things are not equal. when the government
increases spending does it necessarily mean that the money will get into the
hand of every hardworking Nigerian out there? it doesn't, neither does it
mean that the qualified graduates will be employed.
What is going to
be done in our education system so that Nigerian students don't leave school without
real world skills.
There is nothing
more annoying than working extra hard for four years of your life and an employer
who is employing for graduate positions for basically crappy pay tells you
that it will be better if you had a masters degree from a school abroad,
whether there is globalisation or not, not all knowledge from outside the
economy is applicable within the economy, that is why other countries prefer
students who have schooled in their country.
On another hand I can understand where the employers are coming
from. Who wants to use all their money and time in training someone in skills
they should already have? You see some graduates come in to an interview with
no skills and ask for start up pay that is probably equivalent to the amount
the company is making as profit. You also see that they are un-teachable and
even unwilling to learn after being stuck in a system where no one rewards hard
work and diligence.
So while the
government is busy spending money on only God knows what, they should consider
investing in building a knowledge based economy. A country filled with educated illiterates is useless and will
continue to exist in a cycle of bad to worse until employers are happy to pick
their human capital from within the economy and train them to be what they hope
for.
Nigerian Institutions
should also look into building a more rounded graduate in skills, in athletics
and in as many fields as possible for a more hands-on kind of education, So
that our graduates can at least compete on a global level with students from universities
outside out shores.
xoxo.
Thought provoking
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