Universities and industry have a shared responsibility to close the gap between graduation and employment
All undergraduate programmes must include developing entrepreneurship, business and workplace skills
Many university graduates today face an uphill battle when it comes to utilising their qualifications to make a living. Two approaches to obtaining gainful employment are usu- ally tried. The first is to apply for any job, even if it is not related to their qualification, simply to “get a foot in the door” and hopefully work their way to the position for which they are qualified. The second option is to start up business or entrepreneurial initiatives themselves.
Neither of these approaches is optimal, because employers are missing out on the opportunity to access and benefit from talented employees with the latest qualifications. And while small businesses are widely recognised as a solution to South Africa’s unemployment challenges, the high failure rate of start-ups points to the likelihood that few of the freshly graduated business owners are likely to see their entrepreneurial ventures succeed in the long term.
The problem, in both instances, is essentially a lack of suitable entrepreneurial and business development skills. While undergraduate students are leaving their tertiary institutions with a degree or diploma that qualifies them to venture into a specific line of work, very few are being adequately prepared to take up their places in the work or business environment. In most cases, what is lacking from their qualifications are essential business and entrepreneurial skills that prepare them to be highly functional, productive and value-adding employees, or successful business owners and employment creators.
This general lack of business and entrepreneurial focus in undergraduate courses is one of the key contributors to the somewhat unique situation that sees South Africa having a huge pool of newly graduated and qualified young people but, at the same time, being faced with widespread youth unemployment.
There are two ways to address this problem. The first solution takes a long-term approach aimed at fixing the root of the graduate unemployment challenge. This requires the inclusion, in all undergraduate programmes, of learning that is specifically focused on developing entrepreneurship, business and workplace skills that extend beyond the area of specialisation on which the course is focused. While this level of skills development will not necessarily guarantee that these students immediately gain employment or open successful businesses when they graduate, their inclusion in all undergraduate curricula will most certainly give young graduates a much-improved chance of success.
The second solution focuses on addressing the immediate challenge of large, and growing, numbers of unemployed graduates. As is the case with most social challenges, the solution requires collaboration and partnership between the country’s education, private and public sectors. Essentially, what is needed is a graduate incubation system that sees businesses in partnership with higher education institutions, taking in unemployed graduates to equip them with entrepreneurial and business development skills and coach and mentor them to the point that they become more employable locally or globally, and have the knowledge and skills to undertake successful entrepreneurial ventures themselves.
Unlike existing graduate development programmes that focus on upskilling select graduates to take up specific roles in the business world, these incubation programmes need to be more generally focused on fostering graduates’ business development, while at the same time giving them the opportunity to gain experience, skills and authority in their chosen fields of work, thereby significantly increasing their potential for employment and successful, sustainable entrepreneurship.
And in exchange for their commitment to this type of graduate incubation system, businesses would also benefit significantly. Instead of being faced with the ongoing challenge of having to employ undergraduates who simply aren’t work ready, businesses have the opportunity to mould and upskill these qualified individuals in an incubation environment that effectively gives them the option to access a very deep talent pool of work-ready professionals.
Recent history has clearly shown that splitting the responsibility for education and professional development between universities and businesses has fundamental flaws. While this approach may have worked in the past, today it simply isn’t viable to have universities focus exclusively on imparting the core knowledge and skills needed to undergraduates in the current systems, and then send them out into the world in the hope that organisations will employ them and develop them professionally.
What is urgently needed is for academia and industry to work together, with government support and funding, to produce graduates with base qualifications that are supported by strong entrepreneurial abilities, workplace and business development skills, right through to professional development.
Ultimately, this systematic and highly integrated approach is not only more practical for students; it is also a far more responsible, systematic education model overall. It not only presents businesses with a viable solution to the challenge of an ever-widening skills gap, but also has the potential to significantly improve the probability of employment and long-term career success for South Africa’s university graduates.