Determined to improve graduates’ employability in the country and help steer higher education institutions towards better alignment with market needs, The Tertiary Education Trust Fund in collaboration with the International Finance Corporation and local partners has commenced the conduct of a National Employability Benchmarking Programme in universities.
Sonny Echono, Executive Secretary of TETFund, said the programme provides system and institutional level insights that help identify key intervention areas that will enhance the employability ecosystem and improve graduate employability outcomes.
According to Echono, the IFC was utilising its vitae employability tool to analyse how well tertiary institutions in Nigeria are in tune with employability best practices.
“IFC Vitae is a global first-of-a-kind, survey-based diagnostic instrument, which assesses, processes, structures and supports employability outcomes for higher education institutions,” he said.
He said that one of the key roles of TETFund was to develop an enabling system for young graduates to be part of the active labour market soon after graduation.
He further said the diagnostics, led by the IFC, is the first phase of designing an intervention to improve graduate employability outcomes. The programme will help to improve the current position of higher education institutions in the country in relation to global best practices.
“The first stage of the programme was to develop a snapshot of current employability practices, specifically to understand how the current regulatory policy framework may act as an enabler or barrier to success.
“The focus was to collect, validate and analyse the data of participating universities in Nigeria. This stage was coordinated by Cognity Advisory, a local development consultancy working on behalf of TETFund with IFC global employability experts, ” he said.
