HIGHER EDUCATION’S CONSCIOUSNESS TO EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS: PANACEA TO GRADUATE UNEMPLOYMENT IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Today, employability skills are the most required skills in the labour market in an attempt to get job and sustain it. Regrettably, graduates from Nigerian universities lack the needed skills to enter into the workforce due to the skill-deficiency in the higher institutions’ curricula. Many concerned individuals observed that the rate of unemployment was increasing because most graduates in the country lack the needed skills for employment. No wonder, the Labour statistics report of Nigeria during the fourth quarter, 2017 had it that 7.9 million Nigerian youths were currently unemployed. The Malaysian graduates faced such problems some years back, and their government intervened by rolling out several programmes and initiatives to combat lack of employability skills. Learning from the Malaysia employability initiatives; National Higher Education Strategic Plan (NHESP) and National Higher Education Action Plan (NHEAP) were introduced by the government to transform higher education system, and the situation changed for the better in the country. Nigeria government can take a leaf from this. This paper therefore recommended that, the Nigerian government should learn from the likes of Malaysia, Thailand, and the USA as how ro tackle the challenges of graduate employability so as to reduce unemployment among the graduates.