All theory and no practicals makes graduates half-baked

In 2016, a debate on half-baked university graduates started raging across the country. This was after employers said many graduates lacked employability skills, technical mastery and work-related skills.

The 'half-baked' tag has left many graduates job hunting for years, what Kenyans call 'tarmacking'. This is because employers shoulder the cost of retraining such young people for them to join the workforce.

By the mere fact that employers are going for the highly experienced employees out there, the youth are left out there in the cold. This has contributed to a high level of unemployment, which has become a national concern.

The youth unemployment situation is particularly serious.  For instance, in the period 1998-2005, aggregate unemployment fell from 15 per cent to 12.5 per cent, but the share of the youth in unemployment rose from 60 per cent to 72 per cent.

And the rate of joblessness is almost 40 per cent of youth or an estimated 5.2 million young adults. This is double the adult average of 21 per cent.

Some of the factors attributed to the half-baked tag include few academic hours, corruption, congestion, inadequate facilities and too much theory as opposed to hands-on learning.

According to the Commission for University Education, there are 31 public chartered universities in the country and six public constituent colleges.

Also, there are 18 private chartered universities, five private constituent colleges and 14 institutions with letters of an interim authority. This brings all universities to 74.

'USELESS' COURSES

Already, the government has embarked on proposals to scrap some degree courses. At the University of Nairobi for instance, more than 40 courses could be discarded. The courses cut across certificates, diploma, bachelors, masters and PhD.

Among those targeted are agriculture, mathematics, population studies and research institute, nursing science, translation and interpretation, biological sciences, African women studies, arts, institute of anthropology, gender and African studies and physical sciences.

The Economic Survey 2019 showed that the government has only created 1.8 million jobs in six years. This is equivalent to 360,000 new jobs per year, which is 64 per cent less than the one million jobs Jubilee promised when it took power.

In the last two years alone, 92,500 jobs were lost, with the total number of employed Kenyans standing at 17.78 million. As of 2016, there were 1.44 million unemployed Kenyans, who formed part of the 19.31 million working-age population.

Of the same population, 5.64 million were inactive due to school and family responsibility. Ironically, the economy has shot up from 4.9 per cent in 2017 to 6.3 per cent last year, raising questions of how a jobless population is driving the economy and making it thrive.

The survey showed that the education sector witnessed a general increase in the number of educational institutions across all categories. The most notable increase was in public vocational training centres, which went up by 26.6 per cent to 1,502 in 2018. Similarly, the total number of primary schools rose by 7.0 per cent to 37,910 in 2018.

The total expenditure for the  Education ministry is expected to increase by 6.5 per cent to Sh439.2 billion in 2018-19, with Sh407.4 billion expected to be spent on the recurrent account.

Development expenditure is expected to rise significantly by 51.4 per cent to Sh31.8 billion.

Edited by Tom Jalio