What universities can do for fresh graduates

The current economic times are tough and getting tougher. With some once economically prosperous countries like Greece facing the risk of bankruptcy if the EU bailout efforts do not yield fruit, one can generally exonerate any government or country from blame over the high rate of unemployment in the contemporary society.However, the fact that the current economic melee is in part a result of forces out of the control of world authorities is not in itself solely to blame for the frustrations of the unemployed graduates.Well. Get me right. I am not changing tune. I well understand that education is not for employment. It is also true that governments, private, and public companies cannot employ all the ever-increasing graduates. The labor market is almost saturated.My point is that the quality of training, the curriculum and the ever-dynamic demands of the labor market have to be factored into the training process.The issue of mismatched skills inculcated in graduates and those employers require has been in the limelight for several years now.From time to time commissions of inquiry and task forces have pointed out problems of disparities between the job market needs and the skills inculcated in the graduates. Independent and sanctioned researches have also consistently shown that the curricular in higher education institutions is not being derived from task analysis, which could be based on the requirements of employers.Researchers advocate that the curriculum and programme contents of our universities should be designed to meet current specifications and requirements of industry.The university curricular should be in line with task analysis of various skills approved by various employers of labor while the principles of competency-based instruction should guide all university teaching.University departments should also be changing their curricular every two to three years, in order to ensure that the content of their teaching reflects the rapidly advancing frontiers of scientific knowledge.Moreover, there should be more investment in the acquisition of current teaching and learning resources especially in the in the ICT field. The value of teaching – learning resources in the educational process cannot be overemphasized. The governments and university management should pay more attention to this.Universities should keep good records of their graduates for feedback purposes while academic departments should liaise with employers for information on their employed ex-students.