TETFund: Boosting Labour Market Prospects For Varsity Graduates

There’s no doubt that Universities today are facing increasing expectations in terms of helping students secure employment after graduation.

The dire unemployment situation many graduates and those with advanced education in the country face is a cause for widespread concern.

Concerns surrounding post-graduate career prospects have called for a need to tackle it collectively.

To address the challenge of unemployability of graduates from Nigerian universities, the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), is engaging in programmes aimed at ensuring tertiary institutions churn out graduates that meet the needs of industries.

Recently, the Fund commenced the conduct of a National Employability Benchmarking Programme in Nigerian universities in collaboration with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and other local partners.

The National Employability Benchmarking Programme is coordinated by TETFund with the support of the Federal Ministry of Education, and the National Universities Commission (NUC).

Speaking at the event, the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Arc. Sonny Echono, said the move is part of efforts to improve employability in the country and help steer higher education institutions towards better alignment with market needs.

He said IFC is utilising its Vitae employability tool to provide a diagnostic macro snapshot of how well tertiary institutions in Nigeria are implementing employability best-practices.

Echono lamented that Nigeria being a developing country is beset with the challenge of unemployment, particularly youth employment which is at its highest level.

“The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has put Nigeria’s unemployment at 33.3%, while youth unemployment in the country is at 42.5% and youth under-employment is 21.0%. 

“Besides, the 2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index recently released by the Bureau reveals that 133 million people in Nigeria are poor, living below the poverty line, which implies that 63% of persons living within Nigeria are multidimensionally poor,” he said.

According to him, they will also measure how tertiary institutions are establishing a baseline for employability, and potentially supporting the development of a strategic approach to sector intervention.

“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 program provides system and institutional-level insights that helps identify key intervention areas that will enhance the employability ecosystem and improve graduate employability outcomes,” he said.

The TETFund boss further noted that “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. 

“This diagnostic led by the IFC is the first phase of designing an intervention to improve graduate employability outcomes. The program will help improve where higher education institutions in the country are presently in relation to global best practices.”

“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 TETFund with IFC global employability experts.

“IFC Vitae has been deployed in different countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbeans, to hundreds of higher education institutions, helping them in developing a pathway for improving graduate outcomes and implementing institutional goals for graduate employability.

“The recent stakeholder roundtable in Abuja brought together leadership from Nigerian higher education institutions and provided an opportunity to share early findings from the program, highlight policy and process gaps, and discuss sector-level and institutional opportunities for improvement of practices supporting graduate employability.”

He noted that the best ways for unleashing the enormous youth potential, addressing unemployment as well as other societal problems, and growing the economy is for TETfund to align its intervention activities to meet changing needs, and strengthen the country’s education delivery towards fostering an entrepreneurship culture.

Before the commencement of the National Employability Benchmarking Programme, Echono had reiterated that the agency was poised to work with the beneficiary institutions to address the challenge of unemployability of graduates from Nigerian universities.

Speaking when he received the Governor of Anambra State, Prof. Charles Soludo in his office, Echono said the Fund has changed its focus to research.

He stated that TETFUND has put in place mechanisms through specialised training to ensure Nigerian graduates are easily employable, while the Students’ Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES) is being refocused.

Also, TETFund recently approved the setting up of a secretariat to operationalise partnership with the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG) to ensure that tertiary institutions churn out graduates that meet the needs of industries.

At the meeting with NESG’s delegation led by its chief executive officer, Laoye Jaiyeola, in Abuja, Echono said the secretariat would be domiciled in NESG.

He described NESG as the policy arm or coordinating group for the Nigerian private sector representing industry. He noted that partnership with the group was imperative to drive the concept of employability of graduates, improving curriculum delivery in institutions, making graduates of institutions more relevant to the workplace and the work opportunities of tomorrow.

The TETFund boss further stated that the partnership “is to ensure that our institutions become more relevant to our society, to our national development aspiration, to the needs of industry, to solving our own problems, and improving the lifestyles and standard of living of our people generally.”

He further explained that the move was part of the synergy-building efforts by the National Universities Commission (NUC) and TETFund under its policy of the triple helix approach to research which is anchored on government, academia and industry partnership.