Should university teachers be required to work in industry?

A recent report in Uganda calling for prospective higher education tutors to train in mainstream industry and “appreciate society and employer needs” before being licensed to teach at universities revisits the perennial question: what is the role of a university?

Researchers interviewed lecturers and tutors at 30 public and private institutions of higher learning in Uganda to establish whether the academic teachers had competence to incorporate the kind of practical and hands-on programmes government is currently pushing in universities.

Over 60% of the 180 respondents failed to demonstrate the ability to integrate skills education into their teaching, according to the report, titled The Rise of Unemployment among University Graduates in Uganda: A case study of public and private universities, presented to Minister for Higher Education Dr John Chrysostom Muyingo in December.

“We cannot successfully implement skills education that is more relevant to society when many of our higher education tutors cannot demonstrate competences and aptitudes needed to design and implement practical education,” said the report commissioned by the Uganda National Curriculum Development Centre.

The report recommends that prospective higher education tutors seek employment in industry for a period of not less than two years before being licensed to teach at universities and other institutions of higher learning and after they have “appreciated society and employer demands”.

A ‘new breed’ of tutors

The recommendation is aimed at creating a “new breed” of tutors who are in touch with the world of work and are more likely to design and instruct programmes that are relevant to society and fulfil employer demands, said Benard Akol Otemor, curriculum specialist in charge of business, technical and vocational education and training at the Uganda National Curriculum Development Centre and the lead researcher for the survey.

“It is not enough to get a first-class or upper second degree and you are immediately channelled back [to university] to start teaching. You are basically going to be repeating the same content your lecturers taught you,” he said.

“This is the reason we still have a mismatch between what universities teach and what industry and the employer demands. We need to close this gap,” said Otemor, presenting the report findings.

It is envisaged that implementation of the recommendations would ultimately reduce graduate unemployment.

As in the rest of Africa, graduate unemployment is high in Uganda, with only about 113,000 of the 400,000 graduates entering the labour market annually able to get jobs, according to the Uganda Investment Authority.

Several reports have blamed the situation on university training, saying it is detached from societal needs and does not equip students with the skills to find or create jobs.

However, some experts argue it is unrealistic to require university tutors to enrol for ‘vocational skills’ training – much as they acknowledge the need to close the skills gap.

Professor Venansius Baryamureeba, an educationist and former vice-chancellor at both the Uganda Technology and Management University and Makerere University, said: “You cannot make it mandatory for university lecturers to also be technicians.”

‘Lecturers are supposed to lecture’

“Lecturers are supposed to lecture. That is why they are called lecturers. They are supposed to engage in research and the generation of new knowledge, and to pass it on. Not necessarily skills,” he said in an interview.

A computer scientist by training, Baryamureeba said it was not the concern of a university whether graduates leave universities with skills or not. Graduates could always acquire skills after completion of their university programme, he said.

And some are doing it already. For instance, law graduates enrol at the Law Development Centre where practitioners, not necessarily academicians, instruct them for one year in legal practice before they qualify. Graduates of medicine attend an internship at hospitals before they can register to practise.

Professor AB Kasozi, an educationist and former executive director of the Uganda National Council for Higher Education (NCHE), agreed that it was not the job of universities to teach technical skills.

“We all appreciate the need for Skilling Uganda [the national skills development plan]. But universities by law are mandated to generate new knowledge and to teach. It is the role of a university to teach students to think so they can later come up with solutions to society’s problems,” Kasozi told University World News.

“Universities have freedom to design and teach the programmes they want. Government cannot say it wants to make uniform what they [universities] can teach and make it mandatory [for university lecturers to acquire industry skills],” he said.

He conceded that the skills needed by teaching staff would obviously differ in a technical university.

“There is no debate for these institutions [technical universities]. Tutors or personnel intending to instruct in technical institutions have to acquire the skills,” said Kasozi. “You cannot teach what you don’t know.”

Uganda currently has no technical universities, although there are a total of 52 universities, private and public, and eight other degree-awarding institutions as well as over 200 tertiary institutions. Graduate degree enrolment has increased from less than 10,000 in 1990 to about 60,000 today. Employment opportunities have not expanded proportionately.

The problem has social dimensions, with research suggesting that many students would rather attain degrees than pursue diploma or certificate programmes because a degree remains an important status symbol.

Needs assessment

Conducted between March 2018 and November 2019, the report by Otemor and others calls for the NCHE and institutions of higher learning to engage in “thorough needs assessments” when designing university programmes.

“Universities design their own programmes,” said the report. “But this should be after a thorough needs assessment by the specific university and the National Council for Higher Education and industry which will inform all the stakeholders that indeed programme X is important.”

The needs assessment should also indicate the number of students the university can admit to the specific programme, it said.

Charles Ocici, an entrepreneurship development coach and executive director for Enterprise Uganda, has in the past argued that the country is stuck in a colonial system that trains students to be lawyers and administrators, instead of entrepreneurs and “road designers, metal fabricators and builders”.

“Our education system has to be tweaked to prioritise this. If the universities we have cannot do it, government should put money into our technical institutions to champion this [Skilling Uganda] agenda,” said Ocici.

Baryamureeba argued for a law requiring industry to participate in the design and implementation of university programmes.

“They [industry] are the ones complaining that graduates from our universities are half-baked; that our [university] programmes are a mismatch from what society wants. So should they participate in the formulation of these programmes? I think they should,” said Baryamureeba.

He said industry and institutions of higher learning could design joint programmes whereby 50% of the programme is implemented by the institutions and the other by industry.

“Students will not be allowed to graduate until they have met all the university and industry requirements,” he said.

He welcomed the report’s recommendation to limit the number of students a university can admit to specific programmes, saying “excess applicants can be encouraged to join technical institutions”.

Saul Waigolo, spokesperson for the NCHE, said the regulatory council has in fact issued a directive to universities to restrict student admissions to specific programmes in relation to resources.

He said the NCHE encourages all stakeholders, including industry, to participate in the design of university programmes.

“Universities have to demonstrate to us that they consulted the public before the council can accredit their programmes,” said Waigolo.

But there is clearly room for improvement.