The Future of Education

In South Africa, there has been debate for many years about the level of graduate unemployment, and whether or not it constitutes a crisis. In a country in which unemployment in general is high and increasing – with some 3.3 million youths not in education, employment or training (known as NEETs) – graduate unemployment has for many years been relatively low. A university education is seen by many as the most assured ticket to employment and out of poverty and the employment rate among graduates has always been far higher than for those with other levels of education, as measured through the national Quarterly Labour Force Survey of Statistics SA. While there is no national graduate destination survey in South Africa, the indications derived from monitoring the trends at institutional level through an annual survey of graduates, as discussed in this paper, are that there are beginning to be significant numbers of graduates who too are finding it difficult to secure employment. The paper argues that we may be seeing the emergence of the graduate NEET, which poses many challenges for institutional leaders and national policy-makers. This paper analyses data based on responses from 3 702 of a university’s recent graduates, as well as views from the university’s major employers, to establish the nature and extent of the concern. It also discusses a statistical analysis that was carried out to determine which factors most influence graduate employability. Among its more significant findings is that students having had some form of employment while they were studying was the biggest predictor of their successful employment as graduates. This suggests that among the more effective support interventions that universities can offer in anticipation of a potentially emerging graduate NEET problem, is the facilitation of work-study programmes or placements, internships, employment portfolios or virtual clinics or other such programmes to increase graduate employability.

Keywords: Graduate employability; graduate survey; unemployment; higher education.

References:
[1] Altbeker, A. & Storme, E. (2013) Graduate unemployment in South Africa – a much exaggerated problem. Johannesburg, The Centre for Development and Enterprise.
[2] Bhorat, H., Lilenstein, A., Lilenstein, K. & Oosthuizen, M. (2017) Youth Transitions from Higher Education into the Labour Market, LMIP Report 36, Pretoria, HSRC.
[3] Cape Higher Education Consortium, (2013). Pathways from university to work: A graduate destination survey of the 2010 cohort of graduates from the Western Cape Universities, Wynberg, CHEC.
[4] Senekal, M. & Munro, N. (2019) “Lessons learnt from two decades of graduate tracer research: Recommendations for the South African context”, South African Journal of Higher Education, 33 (2), pp 230-248.
[5] Statistics SA (2020) Quarterly Labour Force Survey, Quarter 4, 2019, Pretoria, Stats SA.
[6] Van Broekhuizen, H. & van der Berg, S. (2013) “How high is graduate unemployment in South Africa? A much-needed update”, Stellenbosch,
www.econ3X3.org
[7] Walker, M. & Fongwa, S. (2017) Universities, Employability and Human Development, London, Palgrave, Macmillan.