It’s Graduation Season again. This is one of the highlights on the academic calendar, when institutions showcase the scholarly achievements of their graduates. In the life of a student, this moment is a rite of passage to transition from “gown to town”; from tertiary institution to the world of work. 

For many graduates, the euphoria will unfortunately be short-lived. After all their sacrifices, struggles with funding and  accommodation,  as well as the challenges that come with higher education, they will now face the cold, harsh reality of the marketplace. Here different rules and norms apply. It’s complex, rapidly changing and highly competitive. Few graduates are prepared for this, which exacerbates the already serious youth unemployment crisis in the country.

“The world doesn’t care about what you know. The world only cares about what you can do with what you know and it doesn’t care about how you learnt it.” This quote by New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, should be a wake-up call to graduates and higher education faculty alike. After 12 years of secondary schooling and about four years of tertiary education, key questions must be addressed. What are graduates capable of doing with their learning? What problems can they solve? What value do they bring to society?

The marketplace thrives on entrepreneurialism, innovation, critical thinking, decisiveness and problem-solving abilities. But, at most tertiary institutions teaching is still done in passive, old-fashioned, teacher-centred, and discipline specific ways. Rote learning is common and there is little emphasis on innovation or entrepreneurial thinking. This affects employability and therefore it’s not surprising that unemployment among graduates is on the rise.   

The Statistics South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the last quarter of 2024 showed no substantive change in employment levels. Youth aged 15 to 24 and 25 to 34 continue to have the highest unemployment rates at 59.6% and 39.4% respectively. Even though the graduate unemployment rate decreased by 1.1 percentage points from 9.8% in Q3:2024 to 8.7% in Q4:2024 these are still unacceptably high numbers of unemployed graduates. 

What’s even worse is for job-seekers with just a matric school leaving certificate. They are even more vulnerable with unemployment rates of about 38.2%, while the NEETS (not in employment, education or training) aged 18 to 34 are up from 8.6 million to 8.8 million compared to the same quarter in 2023.  

High youth unemployment casts a blight on the country’s prospects, because we are not preparing the human resources that the country will need in the future both from skills capacity or in terms of growing a tax base to fund future development needs.

Education is costly in time, labour and infrastructure and places a significant burden on the public purse. So when graduates and youth struggle to find employment it should ring alarm bells and prompt urgent, decisive action from all stakeholders — government, education institutions, learners, corporates, parents. 

New minds — new thinking and new ways of doing must be prioritised. This is not only to access employment, but to keep pace with the rapid developments in technology, work processes and sustainability issues such as climate change. Hence educators at all levels need to critically evaluate what they teach, how they teach and, more importantly, how their content aligns with the needs of the modern world. 

From its Latin roots, education derives from “educare” which means “to bring up” or to “nourish”. So activities in the class and lecture rooms must nurture and harness the natural creative talents latent in each human being and complement these with academic and technical knowledge. It was the late Albert Einstein, not only a brilliant physicist but also an astute social commentator who once defined education as, “what remains, once we have forgotten everything we learned at school”. Einstein understood the essence of education — education that transcends rote and book learning; education that presents its value in what we’re able to do to create a better world. 

Even though human development is systemic, education should be at the forefront because of the time and resources invested in it. Therefore didactics and epistemology should be updated to align more closely with industry trends and innovations. The explosion of smart technology in the 21st century and its rapid evolution is having a huge effect on the world, economically and developmentally.  This shows a clear need for urgent investment and development of skills conducive to a knowledge-based economy. 

Although there has been significant promotion of the STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects, what needs to be reviewed is when and how these are taught. The logic and rigor of these subjects must be instilled much earlier in a child’s life and often through activity-based learning rather than boring theory. After all, Scaled Composites (kit aeroplanes), Square (online payment digital platform), Dry Wash (waterless cleaning gel) and BrickArms (Lego accessory maker) were all started by individuals in their own capacities and driven by their own needs. 

Today the Maker Movement is a global community of doers where some garage projects from hobbies and interests have transitioned to businesses and scaled to become multi-billion dollar enterprises. Open source design software, 3D printing, funding from venture funders like Kickstarter and online markets like Etsy,  have democratised manufacturing and brought enterprise into the home where anyone with determination can access it.

Therefore learning should be less theoretical and more applied. Laboratories and workshops can rapidly be transformed to become “maker spaces”. 

“Purpose-driven engineering” at the University of KwaZulu-Natal is one such example. Civil engineering students are encouraged to apply their learning to solve problems in their communities and, by doing so, nurture applied learning, problem-solving as well as task management skills. These will serve them well in their future jobs as professional engineers.

To shape a truly transformative and meaningful educational experience requires intentional engagement informed by social and professional objectives. Teaching and learning should be vibrant, expansive and aligned to the latest social, economic, political and environmental developments. It shouldn’t be limited to the textbook. It requires a dynamic transactional partnership with industry and broader society. This will stimulate curiosity, initiative and accountability.  

When we look into the eyes of our graduates, we need to see a future in the making; one of hope. We need to see the confidence in young minds who are capable and willing to tackle the big challenges to build a more sustainable future for themselves.

Dr Rudi Kimmie is the interim director of the Aerotropolis Institute Africa (UKZN).  He writes in his personal capacity.