Nigerian Engineering Graduates Will Be Employable

There is no data showing how many Nigerian engineering graduates cannot get jobs in engineering fields. However, with widespread unemployment across all sectors in Nigeria, it's safe to conclude that most engineering graduates are either unemployed, employed in a different sector where they don’t use what they learn in school, or underemployed.

The Nigerian government has introduced several interventions in the education sector to help steam the tide of youth unemployment. For instance, almost every University now has an entrepreneurial program where students learn skills like soap making, fashion design, barbing, and so on. In addition, students in the 200 level also stay back in school to learn welding and other artisanal skills.

To ensure that students can pay for education, the Federal Govt recently introduced the student loan scheme where school fees are paid directly to the university and students get monthly upkeep funds to take care of themselves. They are expected to pay back after graduation when they secure a job.

I recently visited the National University Commission (NUC) to get a good picture of what is being done and I was referred to the new curriculum for the Universities. After going through it, I noticed the change introduced wasn’t that much. It was the same with few amendments. I understand that they brought in professors from different universities to work on the curriculum.

However, the curriculum empowered universities to introduce new programs and courses to augment the old ones and to also ensure that scholarships tend towards innovation and equipping of students. There was a section that initiated a program where University lecturers would spend months in the industry to understand how the industry functions.

The South African Experience

South Africa’s youth unemployment rate stands at 45.5% among people aged 15 and 34. The Department of Statistics South Africa website (statssa.gov.za ) shows that holding a tertiary degree or diploma increases young people’s chances of finding employment compared with their less educated peers.

South Africa’s higher education sector has also introduced interventions to address graduate unemployment with programs that will enable students to become entrepreneurs right in school or after graduation.

The Entrepreneur Development in Higher Education (EDHE) program is a people-focused program intended to develop the entrepreneurial capacity of students, academics, and leaders. The intention is to enable students to be economically active during and after their studies.

A Nigerian professor who did his PhD at a South African university mentioned how the program was paid for by industry and all he had to do was conduct research and find the solution for them. I know a friend who also confirmed this.

It's Broken, Time To Mend It

Everyone knows that someone is broken about the Nigerian education system. However, the major challenge is that people are moving in circles and not defining the problem head-on. No one is finding out what the industry wants and expects from the University.

The academia in Nigeria is worried about why the industry is not investing in the University by giving them funds to conduct research. I was in a program where the lecturers lamented about this. I mentioned that all they need to do is ask the guys from the industry why they are not doing that.

The industry has labeled graduates from Nigerian universities as unemployable. Not because students are not intelligent but simply because they lack the basic mindsets and capabilities to make contributions to the industry. The Industrial Training programming wasn’t set up for universities to deliver value to industry but rather for them to take from industry.

When will we stop thinking about what we can get and start focusing on what we can contribute? This is why human-centered design comes into play. Curriculum developers need to start asking themselves what is their product, what service are they rendering and who is the customers. This will completely change their perspective. The University has three categories of customers based on their products:

Category One -Product of University: Knowledge

Customer: Students.

Service Rendered: Training

Category Two - Product of University – Knowledge Workers

Customers: Industry and Government

Service Rendered: Qualified Workers

Category Three – Product of University – Research Findings

Customers: Industry Government

Service Rendered: Solving Problems

Now all three categories are linked together. The industry is set up for profit, so they don’t believe they should throw their money into research when the category two products from universities are not fit for what they want. That tells them that the university doesn’t care what they want and expect.

I believe the industry will readily give money to universities if the universities will build a track record of training and equipping their students for industry. That is students should be trained to understand the needs of industry and what it means to work. Work should be all about making contributions and adding value to the industry.

Our Intervention

For ten good years, we have been studying both industry and university and working on how to create a better link between the two that will benefit not just the students but the nation at large. Mind you, our focus has always been engineering education.

We started by first understanding what engineering is about. Starting from the definition of engineering is more like starting with the why. It becomes the outcome that we seek. In the university, the work of the universities gets defined and that of industry gets defined also.

We define engineering as the mindset and capability to alleviate human sufferings, enhance human livelihood, enrich human lives, and elevate human experience by using mathematical modeling to represent variables, apply and manipulate scientific methods and laws to design solutions that creates and delivers value. This means any engineering education that doesn’t end with innovation and the delivery of value is not complete.

We arrived at five mindset and capabilities that every engineering student need to possess. When they develop the mindsets and acquire the capabilities they will be both human useful to the society and economically valuable to the industry. Here are the five capabilities we develop:

100 level – Project Management: Engineering is all about projects

200 Level – Problem Solving: Engineering is all about solving problems

300 Level – Designing Solutions: Engineering is all about designing technologies

400 Level – Value Creation: Engineering is all about creating value for others

500 Level – Innovation: Engineering is all about innovating

With each program, students get to work with industry in real life setting to develop and master the skills. Through practice mastery gets gain. A student who goes through this program will end up equip not only to work for an industry but also create a business in the engineering field.

We also partner with universities to develop Innovation Hubs in the following areas: healthcare, foodtech, agrictech, energy, waste, consumer products, transportation and climate. Through these innovation hubs, we plan to incubate startups that alleviate the sufferings of Nigeria by enriching their lives, elevating their experiences as humans and enhancing their livelihood.

If you know of a student who is presently studying engineering in any university or polytechnic, get them into our program. Our goal is to make Nigeria a great nation. We solve Nigeria’s most challenging problems through design.

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