Universities urged to produce workers, not thinkers

The increased number of jobless youths in East Africa will continue to double or even triple annually to alarming rates, unless institutions of higher learning revise their curricula to start teaching on-the-job skills as opposed to academic-based programmes, writes Bernard Momanyi for Capital News.

Vice-chancellors and professors from the academic fields attending a regional conference on education that kicked off in Kigali were told it was the only sure way of ensuring graduates don’t spend years looking for jobs before most of them lose hope and resort to menial jobs and others get into crime.

Government representatives and players from the private sector were categorical about the dilemma employers face daily because of the quality of graduates leaving universities. “It is time universities stopped producing thinkers. We already have enough thinkers,” Professor Mayunga Nkunya, the executive secretary of the University Council of East Africa, said. “What is required now are people who can do the work. People with enough knowledge of the job skills. They should produce people ready for the job market.”
Full report on Capital News site