The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), in collaboration with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) has commenced the second phase of employability programme in Nigerian universities.
T h e T E T F u n d E x e c u t i v e Secretary, Architect Sonny Echono, who spoke at the National Employability Programme (NEP) implementation support workshop said the Fund had deliberately refocused its intervention activities to support learning outcomes and employability of Nigerian tertiary education graduates.
According to Architect Echono, the second phase of the employability programmes focused on the implementation of the recommendations from the benchmarking exercise and capacity building in the five employability dimensions, which t h e IFC Vitae instrument examined.
The TETFund Executive Secretary, Architect Sonny Echono, who spoke at the National Employability Programme (NEP) implementation support workshop, said the Fund had deliberately refocused its intervention activities to support learning outcomes and employability of Nigerian tertiary education graduates.
It would be recalled that IFC assisted the Fund to conduct the employability benchmarking assessment programme for some selected universities, reflecting representative samples across the country between September 2022 and January 2023.
The Report indicated that the objective of undertaking the assessment of practices and processes supporting employability in higher institutions, was to identify sector trends and provide comparative institutional findings on employability situations on a system level, to provide a starting baseline to guide the development of specific interventions at both institutional and system level.
Architect Echono said, “The IFC has deployed its Vitae Employability Tool through a programmatic sector level approach by engaging the institutions to develop a sector level language and data-driven understanding.
“The stakeholders debriefing session held on 6 February 2023 on the early findings provided the opportunity for IFC to obtain inputs from key stakeholders, and enriched the final Report with far-reaching recommendations submitted to the Fund in April 2023. The Final Report was forwarded to all our universities for necessary action.
“The Report of the employability benchmarking exercise covers the five dimensions of employability viz: relevance of learning, all our universities for necessary action. “The Report of the employability benchmarking exercise covers the five dimensions of employability viz: relevance of learning, governance and strategy, employer engagement, career services/guidance, and alumni management. It highlighted how student employability support at the universities aligns to good practices globally.
“The Report indicates that the aggregate average score of Nigerian benchmark institutions across the five dimensions of employability is 2.3 out of 4.0 which is just above the average of all institutions benchmarked globally (2.2).
“The Report which also covers the assessment of the institutions’ Digital Learning Strategy shows that surveyed universities lagged behind global best practices in application of digital learning strategies, access to large multidisciplinary databases and digital course-reserves as well as the level of faculty digital skills.
This obviously requires deliberate action on the part of all stakeholders to address our peculiar challenges.”
Speaking further, Architect Echono said Nigeria being a developing economy had been faced with the challenges of high unemployment, particularly youth unemployment that has quadrupled in the country.
According to him, an increasing number of young Nigerian graduates from tertiary education institutions were being released into the labour market with a continuously shrinking absorptive capacity.
The structure of the economy, which was largely import dependent, he said, has further limited the ability of the country to generate commensurable jobs due to low level of industrialization, thereby aggravating the unemployment situation in Nigeria.
“Thus, aligning our intervention activities to meet our changing needs, and strengthening our education delivery towards fostering an entrepreneurship culture are some of the best ways for unleashing the enormous youth potential, addressing unemployment as well as other societal problems, and growing the economy.
The TETFund ES asserted that strengthening entrepreneurship education and training were considered crucial in that regard.
“As an Intervention Agency for tertiary education in Nigeria, TETFund is deliberately refocusing its intervention activities to support learning outcomes and employability of Nigerian tertiary education graduates.
“I am pleased to report that the Strategic and Operational Plan for refocusing TETFund entrepreneurship intervention for employability and innovation was approved by the Federal Ministry of Education in March 2023. Consequently, t h e requirements and guidelines for accessing entrepreneurship development intervention of the Fund were revised in line with the approved Plan,” he said.
“All these efforts are geared towards facilitating the link between Research, Development, and Innovation with the processes of promoting and enhancing entrepreneurship development to ensure graduate employability for national development.
These interventions, the TETFund boss added, would help promote the transformation of our beneficiary institutions into catalysts for knowledge creation and organizing the translation of knowledge into usable products and services for addressing societal problems.
“All these efforts are geared towards facilitating the link between Research, Development, and Innovation with the processes of promoting and enhancing entrepreneurship development to ensure graduate employability for national development. The aim is to enable Nigerian tertiary institutions serve as catalysts for regional and national economic development by unlocking the knowledge potential to solve critical societal challenges.
“The Implementation Support Workshop for which we are all gathered here today, marks the commencement of the second phase of the employability programmes, focusing on the implementation o f t h e recommendations from the benchmarking exercise and capacity building in the five employability dimensions which the IFC Vit a e instrument examined,” he said.
The Executive Secretary further said the workshop would focus one establishing a common understanding of the sector based on the IFC global framework with actionable opportunities on the findings and recommendations from the bench-marking exercise, and promoting the adoption of best practices and lessons learned from a round the world in improving the processes and operations in tertiary level education institutions in Nigeria, and thus provide improved employability services nationally.