Growing number of graduates good sign but that’s how far it goes

I know some matters are very sensitive. I’m one of the people who love to keep secrets especially where revealing them can damage other people or the nation. But there are secrets better revealed if that way it can stop a malpractice or can be a call to action. Last week I was invited to a graduation ceremony to one of the universities in Kenya. I was to witness an award of a PhD in the same ceremony. I took upon myself to sample how many universities were holding graduations and asked through their officials the statistics on graduands across various faculties on diverse levels. Moreover, I also sought to know how many more were holding graduations in this month of December. Some of the information was available through press briefs and features by the University themselves in the mainstream media. There was scanty information available in their websites as well.

Well, the number of graduates is impressive. It just shows that Kenya is growing into a knowledge based economy and I anticipate lots of such industries to emerge and grow. I also love seeing a large community of intellectuals as I anticipate they will engineer positive change and developments in our economy as would be the case in the world. However, some reality check is important. Do we have capacity to tap the intellectual power of these people through proper engagements? Is our economy able to generate requisite jobs for them? Is there a proper solution to the growing joblessness in our economy?

Some numbers are worth looking at. As I sampled the information, the numbers coming from our Universities vis-à-vis economic growth and population growth was important. Our oldest University of Nairobi alone had over 8,000 graduands, about 28% of them Masters students and 76 PhDs - quite impressive! I looked at the numbers from Egerton and Masinde Muliro University – quite encouraging! I had a chance to review the numbers of Diploma graduands for a Thursday 3rd December Medical Training College graduation held at the college grounds at Kenyatta National Hospital - good production still! Indeed the traffic jam for the college and the Universities indicate the importance Kenyans attach to attainment of good tertiary training education. Whole villages, clans and community members are mobilised to witness these great occasions.

By the way, considering the number of pupils enrolling in primary schools, those finishing standard eight and form four, these numbers from universities and colleges can be deceptive.  There are many who don’t attain those reasonable high education levels. Moreover, indications are that the mass of the human resource which is not gainfully engaged in Kenya is immense. Much as it is painful to see graduates roaming the streets searching for jobs endlessly, deeply interrogated the problem is even bigger. Those on the streets searching for a job  which is derogatorily referred to as tarmacking at least have some relatively high level skills to sell. There are many more with no skills or low skills for that matter. They have little to sell or just their physical ability to do some work. It is not possible to build a decent economy when most of the population is not gainfully productive - earning, spending and saving.

So the focus should be what we should do to utilise the human resource capacity we are endowed with. Indeed as the studies of developed nations and fast developing ones have proved, utilisation of the human resource in an intelligent way plays the trick to make a country rich and powerful resulting to offering quality life. Having people is strength but it can only be a good one if they are utilised for production, consumption and saving resources (money) prudently. The biggest resource any country can have is people. But when you have so many people, some who have good qualifications and ability unemployed, you have a major problem.

It has been argued that our graduates must be creators of employment rather than employees. This is a valid argument. However, one has to look at the economy, nature, size, opportunities and the challenges therein. You can’t create a product and hope to succeed if the consumption volume is not enough. There are a limited number of micro enterprises which our economy can support with the deep levels of poverty we are in. There is need to tap and develop more utilisable resources. That is one reason why those who engage in corruption and tribalism need to cleanse their curses as through their actions they inhibit production and job creation. They are committing a crime against humanity and nature. In a nutshell the large number of graduates maybe impressive but there is a lot of structural and futuristic issues to sort out immediately.