Universities produce wrong kind of graduates: analyst
SKILLS WE NEED: Management, engineering, law, finance, accounting and medicine
Universities are producing the wrong kind of graduates to redress South Africa’s high unemployment rate, a labour analyst says.
“There are currently nearly 600,000 unemployed university graduates in South Africa, mostly in the arts, humanities and social sciences,” said Adcorp labour market analyst Loane Sharp in a statement. “Whereas the private sector has more than 800,000 vacancies in management, engineering, law, finance, accounting and medicine.”
Sharp said some professional bodies also restricted entry into their fields through the standards they set, often in concert with universities. This was typically backed by legislative and regulatory requirements.
Sharp said, for example, the General Council of the Bar, the law societies, the Health Professions Council of SA and the Institute of Chartered Accountants set their own criteria — like exams and low-paid articleship or housemanship — as a prerequisite for entry into the professions. “By contrast, fields such as physics, finance, engineering, economics and management do not have professional bodies,” he said.
A supplementary analysis to the Adcorp Employment Index released on Tuesday found that government handouts, trade unions and affirmative action were negatively affecting the desire to work in South Africa.
“As many as 10.2 million South Africans — one in five — receive grants of one form or another, amounting to 14.9 million grants or 1.5 grants per recipient, yielding average annual transfers of R9539 per beneficiary,” Sharp said.
Referring to Statistics SA’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey, Sharp said 43% of unemployed people were willing to accept a job, if offered, when they were living off their own savings.
In contrast, only 11% of people would accept a job if they were supported by social grants and welfare.
“Unemployed people are also more likely to remain out of work if they are supported by social grants and welfare: the average duration of unemployment is 16 months for people who do not receive grants, compared to 21 months for people who do.”
Sharp said trade unions also appeared to discourage work.
“Only 9.3% of unionised workers, as opposed to 17.8 percent of non-unionised workers, are prepared to work additional hours in a given week. “And, of those who will do so, unionised workers are prepared to work an additional 0.9 hours a week compared to 2.4 hours a week for non-unionised workers.”
The index showed that affirmative action also discouraged some job seekers.
Highly qualified whites were substantially less likely than blacks to find a job within 12 months of initiating a job search.
For job-seekers with a tertiary qualification, blacks were 34 percent more likely to find work than whites.
“This has contributed to the higher percentage of whites operating their own businesses.
“Business owners’ share of national income increased from 39.9 percent in 1995 to 47.2% in 2011, while employees’ share has correspondingly declined,” Sharp said.
4biko
so the inability of whites to find jobs propels them to become enterprenuers.... Thats a good one!!!Report Abuse
Blue_Lady
To Sharp, Whites are still most likely to be 1st considered over a Black ppl. As to them starting business is bcoz they don't want report to a black Superior at Work places.... finish 'n klaarReport Abuse
Papage
Thanks I stopped my girl from doing Dramatic Art and now she is happy with what she is doing, she would have been wasted. then useless courses must be banned for some years, to compel student to do what the Market need, I just wonder what kind of work are our Ministers of education doing? they are suppose to be researching all this and assisting schools, with clear information and guidelines, we can not keep on producing what we don't need, hence our so much educated children are not employable, the is no space for them.Report Abuse
ThirdEye
I heard this last week & sowetan is publishing it today. Anyways, I strongly feel that people who let down kids are our secondary school teachers.They know what are the challenges & what kind of skills south Africa needs but they allow the learners to take subjects that will force them to do Social worker (no offence).
During my time, I was forced to take a subject in Standard Grade even though I wanted High Grade, cause the whole class did that, the teacher felt that he can't teach & set the paper for me alone.
Such influence from teachers mislead learners.
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candilious
@ThirdEye- I fully agree with you on this, even on primary level in today's days kids are just being passed on whilst the teacher knows that child needs more yet he is moving on to the next level.Report Abuse
Motabolapasa
@ThirdEyei differ with u on that one, majority of teachers don't know how the corporate world oparate, u are the ones to be blamed, for not enlighten schoolkids with relevant info as to what is needed in labour market.
the other major cause of this graduates being unemployable, is they just don't know what their potentials are and stick to the career which is inline with that.
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Mule
Highly qualified whites were substantially less likely than blacks to find a job within 12 months of initiating a job search.Because highly qualified blacks are cheaper and the company gets BEE points for hiring them. They are then able to claim back money paid to these people on their tax returns.
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