The Tertiary Education Trust Fund on Monday announced the commencement of the conduct of a National Employability Benchmarking Programme in universities.
The agency noted that the programme was in collaboration with the International Finance Corporation and local partners.
The Executive Secretary of TETFund, Sonny Echono, said the move was part of efforts to improve graduates’ employability in the country and help steer higher education institutions towards better alignment with market needs.
Speaking in Abuja on Monday, the TETFund boss noted that the IFC was utilising its vitae employability tool to analyse how well tertiary institutions in Nigeria are in tune with employability best practices.
Echono said, “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.
The programme provides system and institutional level insights that helps identify key intervention areas that will enhance the employability ecosystem and improve graduate employability outcomes.
“This diagnostics, led by the IFC, is the first phase of designing an intervention to improve graduate employability outcomes. The programme will help to improve on 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.”
Echono stressed 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.”
