After passing my 'A' level studies, my parents expected me to get a "university degree", make them proud and then wait for employment either from the government or any company. Four excruciating years later, I got that degree and made my parents happy. Exactly like most families, merely graduating is still considered as the foundation for unending success and a financial breakthrough for the entire family. Parents are willing to work extra hard and borrow as much as they can to meet the heavy cost implications attached to such an endeavor. This is the same script that most parents and youthful minds are referring to from. Youthful minds merely want to graduate at all costs, make their parents proud and then expect to be employed. No one bothers to ask "then what if jobs aren't present?". Most in fact do, though, they will respond by saying, "then a Masters or Phd" and at that stage, they believe a job will be automatic, but will it be? If it's not, what measures are you taking to make sure you enhance your chances of getting one or creating one? Just in case there are a few jobs out there, will your degree empower you to be able to overcome the challenge of being an unemployed graduate? As a recent graduate myself, I have realized the grave mistake I made in choosing my career path and how it will make me extremely vulnerable especially in Zimbabwe if I don't step up my game.
People often assume that once the economy stabilizes, jobs will start falling from the sky not knowing that stabilizing or economic growth is not a one-day event, it's a process that takes years, if not decades. During that process, certain "degrees" are relevant but some are not, there are winners and losers. Uncommon to most people, there are specific professions that are synonymous with specific stages of economic development. Traditionally, a country goes through structural changes as it economically develops. Rostow highlights that a country will naturally pass through 5 stages of economic development, with agriculture typically dominating the early developmental stages and manufacturing & services dominating later stages of development. Coming back to Zimbabwe, agriculture through exports of tobacco and unprocessed minerals represent the significant drivers of the economy. One would, therefore, expect it to be characterized by less productive cheap labor just like most developing countries. In Zimbabwe, however, the human capital is well educated, having one of the highest literacy rates in Africa. The distinct kind of human capital is perceived to be suitable for industrialization but sadly, that is undoubtedly not the typical case.
But why is it like that?
Rostow argues that an economy usually transforms from a less developed agriculture-based economy through industrialization to progressively become a developed economy. This primarily happens in two ways which are the attraction of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and innovative entrepreneurship. Zimbabwe seems to be failing spectacularly at both frontiers. The failure is a direct result of political mishap and the intellectual quality of human capital available. In this article, I will focus on the "quality" of human capital and why it has equally failed Zimbabwe. Since the problem started manifesting a couple of decades ago, it has remained the same, despite changes in the Zimbabwean political landscape. This is why I will hold the political factor constant as it is likely to remain the same if not addressed.
So where are we mistaken?
As the manufacturing side of the economy started dying, the government shifted its policy trajectory to service-based industries like education, tourism, retail industries among others. This is why the multi-campus system has become common trend as it reveals the increasing need to sell as much as education as possible whilst also developing towns with dead industries e.g. Zvishavane. Not only that, most institutions moved to survival mode as the limited numbers of students they enrolled started defaulting on tuition fees. To cut losses and remain profitable, more courses were introduced or enrollment requirements were lowered, mainly in commerce and humanities fields such as accounting, psychology with the aim to accommodate more "clients." Institutions now focused on quantities of enrollments, not the relevance of a program or quality of graduates. Universities became like fast-food outlets which over supply affordable junk food without considering the long-term health effects. No one cares, as long as innocent people eagerly consume whilst they make money. Over the years, such an approach has created a huge surplus of "educated" graduates with irrelevant knowledge to the stage of economic development of our country. Worse still, the most significant portion of such students was poorly educated as universities were only concerned with numbers. Ultimately, you are left with a huge chunk of incompetent human capital with irrelevant skills.
In addition, the education curriculum for Zimbabwe hasn't changed considerably since the 1980's. It has been centered towards rewarding the most brilliant students who can regurgitate the most facts, figures, and equations. I recall my distinguished Econometrics lecturer would prepare us to derive beta ( β) or theta (θ) . We would invest hours trying to manually present and interpret econometric data, a skill that is now done electronically by Strata and E-Views statistical softwares. Frequently, we found ourselves questioning why so much concerted effort was being put in teaching us how to manually calculate econometric data and zero effort towards how to collect, input, correctly interpret data and properly apply it to realistic scenarios with the assistance of statistical software packages. Manual skills were surely relevant in the 1950's when modern computers didn't exist, but not in the 21st century. That ultimate realization hasn't filtered through the intellectual minds of university executives. One starts wondering why our country lacks both innovative students and entrepreneurs who are also critical thinkers and problem solvers. Independent brilliant 'victor' minds who will be able to properly adjust and thrive in a worsening economy through entrepreneurial innovation and problem-solving.
So what has been done?
Well, on how to progressively improve the academic curriculum and education standards, nothing has been done. The only great thing that once happened was the shift in the focus of attention from Commercials and Social Sciences to STEM-related fields. A brilliant move spearheaded by the then Minister of Higher & Tertiary Education Prof Jonathan Moyo who realized this distinct gap and launched an extensive campaign to tacitly encourage gifted students to study STEM-related programs. It was a good move, with many positive long-term benefits. An initiative I genuinely believe should have been introduced a long time ago. I was glad someone had realized that a lot of students were graduating with degrees that not only made them vulnerable to the current economic downturn but also made them irrelevant to any future or current industrialization efforts to drive growth. Sooner or later, this is where Zimbabwe is naturally headed if the current political mess is resolved and only those with such relevant skills will reap the most today and tomorrow.
China's economy has managed to grow exponentially, not because of aimless training of its human capital, but by focusing on specific vocational skills training and STEM fields which ensure the country has the appropriate human capital with skills relevant to drive development not stall it. China attracts FDI not only because of its affordable labor but also because of the attractive quality and economic relevance of the human capital to manufacturing industries.
Apple CEO Tim Cook addressed this point when he said:
There's a confusion about China. The popular conception is that companies come to China because of low labor cost. I'm not sure what part of China they go to but the truth is China stopped being the low labor cost country many years ago. The reason is because of the skill, and the quantity of skill in one location and the type of skill it is.
And China has an abundance of skilled labor unseen elsewhere, says Cook:
The products we do require really advanced tooling, and the precision that you have to have, the tooling and working with the materials that we do are state of the art. And the tooling skill is very deep here. In the US you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I'm not sure we could fill the room. In China you could fill multiple football fields.
Cook credits China's vast supply of highly skilled vocational talent:
The vocational expertise is very very deep here, and I give the education system a lot of credit for continuing to push on that even when others were de-emphasizing vocational. Now I think many countries in the world have woke up and said this is a key thing, and we've got to correct that. China called that right from the beginning.
Watch here:
In Zimbabwe, however, vocational skills and STEM-related academic fields have been de-emphasized due to several possible reasons. The reasons might range from low enrollment rates in STEM fields which affect profitability, to unavailability of specialist lecturers in such fields. This has resulted in the oversupply of qualified graduates who are into humanities and commerce fields. These are not the type of fields that will allow mass employing manufacturing firms to invest in Zimbabwe, unless if the "graduates" are willing to accept the menial jobs usually meant for less educated human capital. This is another contributing factor to the reasons why Zimbabwe only attracts investment in mostly service-based sectors like retail and why China comes with most of its staff when carrying our most skills-based projects, especially in Africa.
With respect to entrepreneurship, most of the necessary skills that students naturally acquire do not empower them but make them vulnerable, especially in the Zimbabwean context. With an under-performing manufacturing sector and an obese service sector, most viable businesses are those that are complementing the manufacturing sector. Most of the industries that have endured the test of time are the vehicle engineers, welders, construction experts, IT experts, carpenters, engineers, doctors, pharmacists, etc. In a country which imports more toilet paper than harvesting machinery, I'm sure one can visualize how deep the problem is. In 2015, the Ministry of Finance stated that most of the SMEs face viability challenges attributed mainly to cutting edge entrepreneurial skills deficiency. As the economy continued to worsen, SMEs that survived the economic turmoil were those that were driven by skilled human capital managed to stay afloat. SMEs, which were into service-based sectors failed to cope as these sectors are predominantly income elastic, unlike engineers and doctors.
The problem is our education system doesn't produce human capital with the ability to become victors but victims during times of economic turmoil. When these young men and women graduate, they expect to be hired and employed. However, a country's citizens should be empowered to generate their own jobs and their efforts must be complemented by other external factors including international investments. I honestly believe despite the economic downturn, the nature of entrepreneurship that citizens ultimately partake in reflects how well educated and empowered are the citizens of a country. Whilst other unemployed graduates in other countries can create prototypes, ours sell airtime and vegetables. I hope, someone can observe the stark difference in the level of expertise, drive and vision in both circumstances. In other countries, a degree in empowerment tool. an enabler and a tool for growth whilst in Zimbabwe, a degree is an entitlement certificate to what the government must do for you. My point is not to say the government is not directly responsible for ensuring a suitable environment for job creation, but at the end of the day how the citizens make their choices given the current situation which will determine how far they can go.
In the UK, there has been an intense debate on what the curriculum should involve with knowledge, learning, theory being seen as ‘traditional and outdated’ and skills, outcomes, application seen as ‘progressive and modern’ concepts. In the US, only 42% of graduates will find a job in less than 6 months. Unemployment and underemployment rates have doubled since 2007 as more than 80% of employers require candidates with work experience and almost 66% of employees are hired on experience over academic qualifications. If both these scenarios are being faced in 1st world countries, what about Zimbabwe?
I believe, our Zimbabwean institutions of higher learning should focus on skills, outcomes, and application more. We have more than 3 universities with the core function of innovating and investing products which are relevant to the Zimbabwean context. Nigeria and Ugandan university students are now building concept cars but in Zimbabwe it's rare. I understand the Zimbabwean economy comes with its challenges, but the graduate unemployment and underemployment problem remain a global one, which is nothing but worse in Zimbabwe. This shows that not all graduates are likely to get jobs the moment they graduate, even if Zimbabwe suddenly becomes a first world country tomorrow. Having said that, what's the way forward in the meantime, should we continue to celebrate the mediocrity that our graduates represent? Should we continue urging the young people to continue recklessly pursuing degrees which make them more vulnerable? Should we continue pursuing degrees for their sake not how they must empower us to empower others? Is a degree representation of job entitlement or maybe it must signify the level of self worth and value in society?
I'm not ruling out the necessity of securing a degree, but considering the volatile and ever-evolving economy and job market, the choice of the degree and the mindset of the one pursuing the degree now plays a huge role. Most students talk about how their degree will allow them to work for certain organisations. What if the opportunity to work for those organisations is not presented to you, how will your degree empower you as an individual? Merely graduating is no longer a foundation to success, but what you are graduating with now matters. The 21st century economies now need graduates with the right mindset, relevant skills, and courageous attitude. Nothing is surely going to fall on our lap and we have to push for the outcome we desire, in a strategic and visionary way. Evading the potential trap of merely aiming to graduate without any clear plan of how that degree will empower you, is one of the ways. I passionately believe its dangerous to study something which will entirely require another third force to activate for you to recognize the economic benefits.
A degree should enable you to be a "victor" not "victim", with or without a job.
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