OPINION: Why universities in Tanzania must create career centres

Tanzanian colleges and universities have not been under any pressure to establish career services centres partly because opportunities for higher education are still very limited. Therefore, they will get the number of students they want, regardless of the range and quality of the services they provide. But that must change. Given the high cost of education and substantial loans that graduates have to repay, colleges and universities have a moral obligation to provide more services for their students, especially career services. Moreover, career services centres would provide a win-win situation to potential employers and students looking for employment or internships. A college or university that produces graduates who are not able to get jobs need some “soul searching” because it is possible that it is offering fields of studies that are not marketable.

In the “good” old days, for those few who were selected to continue with higher education, the government decided where they went to school, what they studied, and where they worked. The remnants of that system, which include the continuation of programmes that were established during the Ujamaa era to meet labour requirements in the public sector, are still present today. A degree in some fields, such as community development, is not easily marketable in the private sector. At the same time, unlike in the 1980s, the government is not able to absorb those graduates. In fact, there is even a huge surplus of graduates with degrees in education. This is not so much because there is an optimal number of teachers in all schools or that the country has an optimal number of schools, but because the government does not have enough resources to employ them. I recently asked someone who graduated three years ago with a degree in education what she was doing and her response was, “nasubiri kupangiwa shule” (I am waiting to be assigned a school). This does not make sense.

No university is expected to guarantee jobs to its graduates, but colleges and universities can certainly help their students in the job search process. A career services centre would assist students from the time they join the college/university with resume and cover letter writing. It would also help prepare them for job interviews by running workshops and mock interviews. Furthermore, it would hold job and internship fairs once or twice a year. If the school does not have an alumni office, the career services centre would also maintain a list of its alumni and collaborate with them. It will take time for some colleges and universities to build a large pool of organisations and companies that would recruit on campus, but each school has to start somewhere. Colleges and universities should continually conduct placement surveys of their graduates and include the results of such surveys in their annual reports for the public to see.

OPINION: Why universities in Tanzania must create career centres

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