Employability

All over the African continent, higher education is expanding its reach, both in terms of numbers and range of qualifications. At the same time, Sub-Saharan universities face enormous challenges in enhancing quality and relevance. There are many reasons for this – paramount is the issue of the lack of reliable and useful data on the basis of which to plan, monitor and review.

Addressing this problem requires meticulous attention to detail, analytical capacity, adequate learning or statistical platforms and high-level management support. Importantly, it is also viewed as needing ongoing and significant financial input.

It is therefore particularly interesting to note the progress of a small pilot project that promises to challenge some of the constraining factors militating against Sub-Saharan African universities’ ability to join the ‘big data’ game.

The project, run by the British Council, seeks to achieve two aims: (i) to conduct a graduate exit survey on graduating Bachelor of Pharmacy students from three major universities in the region (the universities of Ghana, Lagos and the Western Cape), and at the same time (ii) to test the potential of mobile phones for data collection.

The first aim has intrinsic interest, given the significant curriculum developments in the field that impact on the role of pharmacists in national health systems. Graduate exit surveys also provide important information about the kinds of jobs students obtain after graduation – for example, how long it takes them to find a job, what resources they employed to do so, who is employing them (including self-employment) and this helps institutions to build long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with employers.

The second aim, however, has broader implications for universities across Sub-Saharan Africa – indeed, in lower income countries more generally. If it can be shown that data can be gathered cheaply and reliably, and that the quality of the data is not compromised, a major hurdle to establishing and maintaining student databases could be overcome.

Rolling out the survey

Initial evidence in this regard is encouraging, with very high response rates – over 90% of surveys have been fully completed. Analysis of the data is in progress and so it is not appropriate to make more in-depth claims at this stage.

Plans are under way to roll out the graduate exit survey project from the small, highly specialised field of pharmacy to a very large qualification such as the Bachelor of Commerce (or Administration), and to a higher number of universities. This will allow the approach to be fully tested.

At the same time, another higher education project in Sub-Saharan Africa is working on the provision of capacity development programmes for senior professional staff in universities. The four priority topics identified in the regional needs analysis workshops held to date include the capacity to work with data as a planning, monitoring and developmental tool for universities. It is envisaged that staff from universities participating in the early phases of the graduate exit surveys will be among the earliest beneficiaries of these opportunities.

Modern universities need to be much more than centres of teaching and research excellence; they need to be preparing their undergraduates for the world of work, going beyond the formal curriculum to provide pastoral support and improve skills across the board.

There is, however, a relative lack of capacity for many universities, not only in Africa but around the world, to go beyond traditional university improvement efforts (such as increasing the numbers of staff with PhDs) to meet these aspirations.

International internet-based market research firm YouGov recently conducted a survey which discovered that 52% of employers believed that no or few graduates were ready for the workplace, with just 19% believing that all or most were ready – and 17% said that none at all were prepared. This chimes with several of the findings of the recently concluded ‘Universities, Employability and Inclusive Development’ study commissioned by the British Council.

So this is why, in Sub-Saharan Africa, our proposed higher education development priorities are focusing on two areas where we think that we can make a real difference: data collection, analysis and use and support for university staff in this area.

Dr Nan Yeld is a senior adviser in higher education development at the British Council.