A bachelor's degree in house-keeping

In February 2010, I wrote an open letter to President Yoweri Museveni which was also published by the Daily Monitor newspaper; in the epistle, I argued that his major achievements for Uganda such as education for all would also soon become his biggest threat to power. At the time of writing, I had just graduated from University with fancy grades and although I was lucky to have found a job, as a radio news anchor, I earned peanuts and would often pester my father for finances to help buttress my ‘radio celebrity’ status. It was awkward. I was also a team leader for a community based organisation called Youth Action for Development which I had established shortly after graduating, hoping to find solutions to unemployment among my peers. But to be honest, things weren’t working well and I became depressed as the numbers of jobless graduates in my home town surged. Five years later, my letter to President Yoweri Museveni is still relevant and would resonate with any Head of State in this region because the issue of youth unemployment is not limited to just one country. My letter received a prompt response from the President’s office and my organisation was quickly drafted into some youth empowerment program; but I knew it was one of those kneejerk reactions, the program was poorly managed and in the end, it collapsed. Most countries in East Africa have some sort of youth empowerment program, but like in Uganda, their results tend to be quite limited and seldom result into anything tangible as they’re often marred by mismanagement and embezzlement of funds. Unfortunately, countries have continued to use the hand-out approach to address the youth unemployment problem, expecting different results; it won’t happen, instead, the problem grows. Indeed, the region’s youth unemployment problem has grown into a large hungry monster in the last five years and power-thirsty opposition politicians now want to incite the monster to devour incumbent governments in the region. As a result, some leaders are increasingly becoming desperate for any solution that would in any way help reduce the number of jobless youths in their countries or risk them becoming soft targets for organized crime masterminds and civil disobedience sponsors. With a startling headline, a regional newspaper reported this week, that Uganda has reached an agreement with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to export university graduates to Middle East to work as house maids. Quoting the Permanent Secretary in that country’s Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, the graduates would earn between US$200 and US$280 a month. Uganda’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia was quoted saying that the Ugandan housemaids will be of an outstanding value addition to the Saudi kingdom because they can also work as English-language teachers or nannies. Any university student anywhere in the world would be saddened by how low the value of a graduate has fallen yet it’s the reality. If the value of a university graduate has sunk this low, what incentive do parents have to continue paying tuition through the nose to get their kids through expensive colleges? We used to say education is the key but it now appears that after three to six years of academic toil and spending a minimum of $30,000 on tuition, these keys are opening doors to empty rooms. So is University education still a worthy investment? Certainly yes, for I have two university degrees. But we probably need to be careful in what kind of education we invest in because not every university degree is useful. It hurts to see parents toiling and kids reading books to blindness only to be told that the only job available after graduation is being a nanny in the Middle East for US$250 a month. We have heard some terrible stories coming out of Middle East of Africans that are tortured and sexually abused by their Arab masters and coming back home worse off than they had left. But would you rather be a nanny in Saudi Arabia or stay home in East Africa, jobless but with your shiny degree certificate tucked away somewhere in the drawer? It’s a catch 22 situation that requires policy makers to rethink our University Education system just like Sam Kebongo suggested in his commentary yesterday. Because although a university graduate working as a nanny is such a depressing thing, employers claim most graduates are unemployable because of the low quality of college training out there. Today’s university degree might be prestigious but a vocational college diploma may have more employment value on the job market. Instead of sending graduates of business administration to be house-maids in Middle East, how about colleges introduced a specialized bachelor’s degree in house-keeping?

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A bachelor's degree in house-keeping