Financial Times

Unemployment among graduates
Are graduates unemployed because the country's economic growth has been inadequate and does not generate enough employment opportunities or are graduates of poor quality that they are not employable? The previous Minister of Higher Education once said that he was saddled with the twin problems of finding employment for unemployable graduates and finding more places for producing more graduates.

Diverse views characterised the discussion on this issue at the Annual Sessions of the Sri Lanka Economics Association. Professor Swarna Jayaweera a senior educationist was of the view that the fault lay largely with tardy economic growth.

The economy was unable to absorb the graduates put out by several universities, though she stressed the need to improve the quality of education at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels.

She said theories such as a mismatch between expectations of graduates and the available job opportunities sidetracked the real issue of economic stagnation that was the real reason for the inability to find employment for graduates.

In her words "education bashing is a favourite past time in the context of continuing unemployment." She pointed out that the major cause of unemployment was the imbalance between demand and supply owing to the inability to grow adequately to absorb the increases in the numbers coming into the labour force.

A case in point would be the recent experience of the government's inability to employ medical graduates as interns for quite sometime after passing the MBBS degree despite a shortage of doctors.

Professor Jayaweera however admitted that " the quality of university education has deteriorated and universities have lost out to other institutions as centres of research." Two leading representatives of the private sector expressed a contrary view at a different session of the conference. Mahendra Amarasuriya, Chairman of Commercial Bank pointed out that both at Commercial Bank and at Hayleys they have made efforts to recruit graduates without much success as the large number of applicants lack the requisite attributes.

He said the universities should reform their curricula to meet the needed requirements of the private sector. Dr. Anura Ekanayake, Managing Director of UniLevers, expressed a similar view.

He said that as far as Levers was concerned, 95 percent of executives were graduates and most of them were from Sri Lankan universities. He disclosed that they are not in a position to recruit sufficient quality graduates owing to the quality on offer.

Three university dons challenged the view that universities had not revised their syllabuses and training to current needs.

Dr. Dileni Gunawardena, Senior Lecturer in Economics said that at Peradeniya there was a process of reform and adaptation of their course contents to meet emerging needs and that this was a continuous process.

She admitted that there were deficiencies, but that to say that the universities are not making an effort to reform their curricula was a misrepresentation. She also pointed out that there was a large output of university graduates as external students and these students do not come near an inch of a university.

Dr. Upali Wickremasinghe of the Sri Jayawardhanapura University described some of the steps taken to improve the quality of education. Dr. Lochana Gunewardena said the graduates of the Moratuwa University had no difficulty in finding employment. Academics pointed out that many of their graduates are in fact employed abroad and are valued for their undergraduate education in Sri Lankan universities.

This discussion and debate points out the need to really examine the problem in depth. The differences in views reflect the many faceted nature of the problem. There may be many biases and prejudices that prevent a realistic appraisal.

There may be wide differences in the quality of education among the universities as well as among faculties and departments of universities.

The employability of graduates is too important a problem to be periodically solved by the government offering jobs to them and spending public funds wastefully.

It is important that public funds spent on their education lead to their ultimate productive employment. Is there a mismatch between the number of graduates being trained in various fields and the market driven employment opportunities? Are we talking of the few or the many in these varying viewpoints?

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