TETFund to Improve Graduates Employability

The Tertiary Education Trust Fund yesterday announced the commencement of the conduct of a National Employability Benchmarking Programme in Nigerian universities.

The education agency noted that the programme was in collaboration with the International Finance Corporation and other local partners.

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

Speaking in Abuja on Monday, the TETFund boss noted that the IFC was utilising its Vitae employability tool to provide a diagnostic macro snapshot of how well tertiary institutions in Nigeria were implementing employability best-practices.

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.

“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,” 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 programme 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 the TETFund with the IFC global employability experts.

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

It would be recalled that the National Bureau of Statistics has put Nigeria’s unemployment at 33.3%, while youth unemployment in the country at 42.5% and youth under-employment at 21.0%.