Don advocates vocational training to salvage graduate unemployment

A don in the Mechanical Engineering Department of The Polytechnic Ibadan, Dr K.A Yusuf has described higher education as the backbone of any society, saying its quality determines the quality of human resources and development of a country.

He added that manpower outsourcing is inevitable in any society that requires rapid growth and development, hence educational training should be based on societal need, not on education for education’s sake.

Dr Yusuf noted these while delivering the 13th inaugural lecture of The Polytechnic Ibadan on the topic, ‘Graduate Unemployment Crisis in Nigeria: Vocational Training and Agro-Technopreneurship as Strategic Bail Out’ held Wednesday last week at the North Campus Assembly Hall of the institution.

According to him, “many candidates seeking admission every year are lured into courses not marketable, but out of frustration of not meeting up with the cut-off marks of their intended courses of study and they don’t have any other choice than to oblige. They will now graduate and be looking for jobs that are not available.”

Critically analysing the unemployment saga among graduates in the country, he said higher education system in Nigeria should not only prepare students for research and teaching, but rather provide highly specialised training courses that could adapt to the needs of economic and social life so as to cater for the many aspects of lifelong education in the widest sense as well as promote international co-operation through internalisation of research, technology, networking and free movement of persons and ideas.

He, however, lamented that the scourge of unemployment is alarming and increasing numerically every year in the country, adding that it had taken its toll on the socio- economic fabric of the country as most of the criminal activities occurring across the nation could be linked to joblessness, especially among the young graduates.

He therefore advocated that Nigerian graduates be introduced to entrepreneurship training programmes during their studentship, stressing that “graduates unemployment in Nigeria has reached alarming state that requires urgent attention.”

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He advised that a vocational training programme at an undergraduate level is essential for students to acquire skill in any trade of their interest as passion is a welcome development in the right direction.

“This  mandatory programme is creating unemployment for the unemployed due to the acquired skill, while the transaction of the vocational training programme into techno-preneurship programme is generating additional job opportunities for teaming unemployed young graduates,” he said.

He recommended that businesses that thrive in each locality should be encouraged in schools and efforts to focus on mineral exploration and exploitation in different states should be given more attention, noting that “Nigeria is an agricultural nation and the practice of ‘agropreneurship’ should be given a priority.

While he called on the government to develop the agricultural based industries in rural areas so that the rural  candidates don’t migrate to the that the urban areas, he said more employment should be generated in rural areas for the seasonally unemployed people as the approach will also discouraged rural-urban migration among the youths

“Government should allow more foreign companies to open their branches/units in the areas where we don’t have the technological knowhow, so that more employment opportunities could be guaranteed,” he added.