Universities in sub-Saharan Africa must adapt to serve the growing number of students who no longer see their future in conventional salaried employment, says a report on graduate careers in the region. Research commissioned by the British Council indicates that the region’s institutions are still providing rote learning even as graduates’ focus shifts to entrepreneurship and social enterprise.

The study, presented on June 1 at Going Global, the British Council’s annual conference for international higher education leaders, surveyed 6,000 final-year students of a number of universities in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa, and carried out in-depth interviews with individuals and focus groups.

Increasing interest in self-employment was most evident in Kenya, where almost two-thirds (64 percent) of students considered entering work of this kind, compared with a quarter in Nigeria (23 percent), 9 percent in Ghana and 4 percent in South Africa.

More than a quarter of students in Nigeria (28 percent) planned to undertake further study after graduation; in South Africa, 27 percent said they were interested in working in multiple sectors. Only in Ghana did the proportion of students opting for conventional forms of public and private employment exceed 50 percent.

However, the only employability activities undertaken by more than half of students were skills development courses in Kenya (72 percent) — attributable to a national requirement for universities to offer entrepreneurship training —and work placements in Ghana (62 percent), where some universities place strong emphasis on the practice. In South Africa and Nigeria, one in three students engaged in work placements and a further third in voluntary work. Overall, the uptake of careers advisory services, CV writing help and opportunities for contact with employers varied widely across institutions.

The research is the second phase of a three-year project Universities, Employability and Inclusive Development, conducted by the University College London’s Institute of Education in collaboration with four African institutions. Comments Tristan McCowan, reader in education at the UCL Institute of Education (UK) and leader of the project: “Without wanting to stereotype too much, we found across the universities a phenomenon of what’s sometimes called yellow notes — ancient lecture notes delivered in a very transmission-based way and assessed purely by exams. A real transformation does need to take place towards problem-based, critical thinking and enquiry-based forms of teaching.”

(Excerpted and adapted from )