What happens when African students finish their education? Is there an excess supply of educated labour? What do school-leavers and graduates think about the relevance and quality of their education in light of their subsequent experiences of employment?
A large DFID-funded research project has used tracer survey methodology to generate time-series information on the working lives of over 5000 secondary school-leavers and university graduates in Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. The synthesis report entitled ‘Where has all the education gone in Africa?’ summarises the employment and training outcomes among these two groups. It highlights the enormous investments that individuals make in their education and the how the labour market opportunities for these individuals have been changing.
The research findings dispel the common assertions that graduate unemployment in Africa is rising, that graduates are under-employed and not using acquired skills, that female graduates are particularly disadvantaged, and that huge numbers of graduates emigrate. They also show that:
- The HIV/AIDS epidemic is having a devastating impact on the educated – a quarter of Malawians and a third of Ugandans who graduated from university in 1980 have died. Mortality is higher among secondary school-leavers although mortality appears to be on the decline.
- Nearly all of the university graduates interviewed are in training-related wage employment – the incidence of unemployment is very low.
- The incidence of wage employment is considerably lower among secondary school-leavers: of those who quit school in 1990 without reaching upper secondary, only around half are in wage employment in Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
- Governments and donors attach considerable importance to private sector development, but self-employment among graduates remains rare.
- Shortage of jobs in the formal sector means that the incidence of self-employment among secondary school-leavers is high and growing. Large wage disparities between wage and self-employment mean that self-employment is seen as 'employment of the last resort'.
- Many university and school-leavers continue to study: the large majority, particularly women, invest heavily in further education and training.
While most report that their investment in education has produced dividends, there are major concerns about the quality and relevance of education. Over half of junior secondary school-leavers in three of the countries surveyed did not agree that ‘the secondary school curriculum is relevant and up-to-date’. University graduates are particularly concerned that their degree courses were overly theoretical and offered insufficient opportunities for training-related work experience.
The research team warns that the attainment of universal primary education at the expense of secondary and higher education would have serious consequences for human resource development. They recommend that policy-makers:
- pay more attention to ensuring that secondary and tertiary graduates are better prepared for productive self-employment: provision of basic pre-vocational demand-driven training in business and management and information technology is vital
- do more to encourage greater female employment in male-dominated occupations
- raise public sector salaries for professionals in high demand in the North and who have internationally negotiable qualifications
- improve access to universities for the poor: unless appropriate support can be provided the role of higher education in reproducing social and economic inequality will be further reinforced
- ensure HIV/AIDS education is incorporated throughout curricula
- develop local capacity to enable further tracer surveys for all types of education and training provision.
Source(s):
‘Where has all the education gone in Africa? Employment outcomes among
secondary school and university leavers’ by S. Al-Samarrai and P. Bennell,
Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, August 2003 Full document.
Funded by:
Department for International Development, UK
id21 Research Highlight: 2 October 2003
Further Information:
Samer Al-Samarrai
Institute of Development Studies
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9RE
UK
Tel:
+44 1273 678269
Fax:
+44 1273 621202/691647
Contact the contributor: s.al-samarrai@ids.ac.uk
Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK
Paul Bennell
Knowledge and Skills for Development
60 Rugby Place
Brighton BN1 6ED
UK
Tel:
+44 (0)1273 503259
Fax:
+44 (0)1273 503259
Contact the contributor: bennell_swainson@ntlworld.com
Other related links:
'Does investing in education reduce poverty? Evidence from Ghana, Uganda
and South Africa'
'Free education at the expense of quality? Public education spending in
Malawi'
'Meeting education development goals: simply a question of money?'
'Achieving schooling for all – lessons in education spending'
Take a look at the Eldis collection of resources on the Economics of
Education
