Oluwanifemi Ojo
The Tertiary Education Trust Fund on Monday announced the commencement of its initiative to make graduates employable.
The initiative which is the National Employability Benchmarking Programme will be running in Nigerian universities.
TETfund established that this programme was initiated in partnership with the International Finance Corporation as well as other local partners.
According to the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Sonny Echono, the programme is geared towards improving Nigeria’s graduates employability. Also, to align universities with industry and market needs.
The Punch that to Kickstart this project, the IFC would be making use of its Vitae employability tool to provide an overview of the level of adoption of employable best-practices.
He TETfund boss claims that they will also assess how tertiary institutions are setting a baseline for employability and perhaps even helping to foster the creation of a strategic sector intervention strategy.
In his words, “The IFC Vitae is a global first-of-a-kind, survey-based, diagnostic instrument which assesses, processes, structures and supports employability outcomes for higher education institutions.
“The programme provides system and institutional-level insights that helps identify key intervention areas that will enhance the employability ecosystem and improve graduate employability outcomes.”
“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,” the TETFund executive secretary added
“This diagnostic led by the IFC is the first phase of designing an intervention to improve graduate employability outcomes. The programme will help improve where higher education institutions in the country are presently in relation to global best practices.”
According to TETfund, “The first stage of the programme was to develop a snapshot of current employability practices, specifically to understand how the current regulatory policy framework may act as an enabler or barrier to success.
“The focus was to collect, validate and analyse the data of participating universities in Nigeria. This stage was coordinated by Cognity Advisory, a local development consultancy working on behalf of the TETFund with the IFC global employability experts.”
In particular, youth unemployment, which is at an all-time high, is a problem that Nigeria, a developing nation, is grappling with, Echono lamented. Hence, the need for this programme for Nigerian graduates.
