Half-baked job seekers: We should not blame universities

Editor, REFERENCE IS made to the letter, “The issue is unemployability not unemployment” (The New Times, June 10). The reader is right to emphasise youth (and general) employability through skills development programmes that are adapted to labour market demands, rather than employment per se as the way forward in addressing youth unemployment or unemployment in general. It is wrong, however, to put the onus on universities and other academic institutions to pass out graduates with such skills. That is not the role of universities and similar institutions. Their responsibility is to develop the faculties of their charges to be capable of being trained for jobs available in the labour market, or to be able to create their own enterprises. Job-specific training should be the responsibility of the employer, not academia. Where I agree with Gerald’s implicit focus on employability is that in today’s highly dynamic business world where specific skills become obsolescent ever more rapidly, expectations of lifelong job security with the same employer or even in the same industry is unrealistic. It is the responsibility of each one of us to continuously improve and expand our skills sets in order to remain competitive in the labour market by being able to change jobs and employers whenever it becomes necessary. In these circumstances the role of the State, through the Workforce Development Authority (WDA), employers and unions and education and skills development institutions should be to anticipate the needs of tomorrow’s domestic and international labour markets and shape our initial education, then skills development curricula and training programmes in line with those forecasts, putting in place the means to make it possible. It is also incumbent on workers to ensure their own lifelong training to maintain skills relevant to the needs of the labour market. Mwene Kalinda, Rwanda

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Half-baked job seekers: We should not blame universities