The unemployment crisis is one of the main issues affecting the nation. The unemployment rate for graduates from tertiary institutions in Nigeria, however, is more concerning.
Every year, thousands of young people are pushed into the workforce with no chance of finding work that will ensure they can live decently. Specialists from a variety of professions have made an effort to propose a solution to the issue. Regrettably, over the years, not much has been accomplished.
The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) developed an effort that sought to address the persistent issue in order to increase employability and guide higher education institutions toward greater alignment with market needs. unemployment crisis
The Fund organized a National Employability Benchmarking Programme for stakeholders and leadership of Nigerian higher education institutions early in the month in Abuja under the direction of Arc. Sunny Echono. The International Finance Corporation helped to organize the program (IFC).
IFC was using its Vitae employability tool to establish a baseline for employability and potentially assist in the development of a strategic approach to sector intervention by providing a diagnostic macro snapshot of how well tertiary institutions in the country are implementing employability best practices.
IFC Vitae is a survey-based diagnostic tool that is a first of its kind globally. It evaluates, processes, structures, and supports employability outcomes for higher education institutions.
The program offers institutional and system-level insights that support the identification of critical intervention areas that will strengthen the ecosystem of employability and enhance graduate employability outcomes.
As a result, the TETFund’s Executive Secretary, Sonny Echono, expressed the Fund’s commitment to creating an active labor market for graduates at the most recent stakeholder roundtable.
He stated: “One of the key roles of TETFund is to develop an enabling system for young graduates to be part of the active labour market soon after graduation. This diagnostic led by the IFC is the first phase of designing an intervention to improve graduate employability outcomes.” unemployment crisis
He claims that the program will assist raise the standing of the nation’s higher education institutions in comparison to international best practices. He pointed out that the program’s initial step was to create a snapshot of current employability practices with the goal of knowing particularly how the current regulatory policy environment may serve as a success facilitator or barrier.
He stated: “The focus of the programme first state was to collect, validate and analyse the data of participating universities in Nigeria.”
Cognity Consultancy, a local development consulting firm, managed the stage while IFC global employability experts worked on behalf of TETFund. IFC Vitae has been made available to hundreds of higher education institutions in numerous nations throughout Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and the Caribbean in order to assist them in creating a pathway for enhancing graduate outcomes and putting institutional goals for graduate employability into action.
“The recent stakeholder roundtable in Abuja brought together leadership from Nigerian higher education institutions and provided an opportunity to share early findings from the program, highlight policy and process gaps as well as discuss sector-level and institutional opportunities for improvement of practices supporting graduate employability.”
The Federal Ministry of Education and the National Universities Commission support TETFund in its coordination of the National Employability Benchmarking Plan (NUC).
