Preparing students for the job market

In an article in The Star Comment Column, Shanthi Nadarajan of University of Arizona expresses her concern that there would lead to fewer job openings for less academically qualified individuals if graduates are taking over less academically demanding jobs of firemen. In her analysis, Shanthi felt that institutions are concentrating on imparting knowledge rather than preparing the students for the job market. Shanthi believes that our universities must organize Career Week where students are taught how to write resumes and how to participate in interviews where real employers come over to recruit potential employees.

Firstly, I would like to clarify to Shanthi that all our public universities do conduct classes that teaches the under-graduates on how to write resumes and how to conduct themselves on job interviews, what are the likely questions that would be posed by interviewers, what are the things expected by interviewers and what participants can do to enhance their chances of employment. Therefore, Career Week is not the problem, neither a solution to our graduates' unemployment problem.

Secondly, Shanthi’s concern that our institutions are concentrating on imparting knowledge rather than preparing students for the job market is outside the context of the main issue – that is, the reasons of unemployed graduates. If at all we had imparted knowledge - relevant knowledge to these undergraduates - it would not be an issue that these students are unprepared for the job market as the job market are looking for those undergraduates who had the knowledge.

The main problem is that most of the lecturers are pure-bred academicians; as opposed to thoroughbred; they had joined teaching or lecturing profession immediately upon their graduation; they had no job experience from any particular industry of which are related to the subject they teaches. For example, I had seen a lecturer who teaches marketing management for 30 years and she was using case studies from textbook – Coca Cola & Pepsi Cola marketing strategy; Michael Porter’s 5-Forces Diagramming, GE & Jack Welch, etc, etc; and she admitted that her knowledge and cases used are totally culled from textbooks and journals. Without the benefits of practical involvement in that industry, you can never discover the profound knowledge of the subject matter - the industry wizardry and excesses.

Equally, I had also seen lecturers and seminar speakers who teach project management, from initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and control, to close-out, including the tools and techniques of schedule development and control. But these preachers had never been project managers throughout their life in that industry they are propagating, and had never developed a schedule for a given project in that industry. They talk about critical path, execution techniques, monitoring systems, and cash flow, but, there is glaring absence of profound knowledge and wisdom.

The fact is, most of the public institutions and preachers are not imparting knowledge to the students or participants – they are preaching information culled from textbooks or journals, and directing them at participants, with expectations that that information can be transformed into knowledge – possibly, profound knowledge! That’s fallacy!

Actual imparting knowledge will enable students prepare for the job market. Every employer will accept a fresh graduate who had the relevant knowledge and the right attitude, but whose only lack is the experience and skills. They will be groomed within the system and the system is capable to do just that.

But the question that must be asked is: Did we impart knowledge or did we gave the students information of the knowledge? Did we actually teach them knowledge or did we preach to them information of the knowledge?