Browsing by Author "Dube, Sithobile Priscilla"
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- ItemExamining relations between educational policy and higher education students' access to industry in Zimbabwe(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2019-12) Dube, Sithobile Priscilla; Waghid, Yusef; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Education. Education Policy Studies.ENGLISH SUMMARY : Zimbabwe has experienced a rise in unemployment and underemployment since 2004 as recorded in the reports of 2002-2018 (Amadeo, 2018; Luebker, 2008; Shizha & Kariwo, 2011). The issue of graduate employability has been appearing high on the agenda of higher education, government, universities and industries. The employers and employees, graduates, students, parents and other stakeholders cry foul over what they see as a gap between the graduation of university students and their entry into the world of work. The various arguments throughout this thesis and the discussions of the results obtained from the data collected seem to exert pressure not only on universities to produce employable graduates, but also on the country to have a sustainable economy that would assist the universities to run well. The arguments also pose a responsibility on employers to give their input on how to handle the complicated transitions in the journey of graduates during and after their period of study. This research aimed to contribute to the current body of knowledge on graduate employability. The research focused on elaborating on the experiences of 20 participants including university students, graduates during their transition into employment, and managers in industries. The research was conducted using an interpretive approach. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in two separate stages of approximately 50 minutes each with all the participants. Analytic induction was used to uncover categories and themes in the data set. Three themes were used to analyse data collected during the interviews. The first theme viewed the graduates’ access into the industry. The major concern was to find out from the participants whether university programmes were tailored to produce graduates that were employable and suitable for the industry. Secondly, the issue of democracy was pursued in order to determine whether there existed democracy in the university programmes. The focus was on education, training and development in order to establish whether the curriculum was suitable to produce employable graduates or not. The issue of stakeholder involvement was considered. Thirdly, entrepreneurship in Zimbabwe was discussed with the intention of determining whether the graduates had received enough training and development to promote employability, business ventures and job creation opportunities. The findings revealed that there was a need for dialogue and collaboration amongst universities, industries and government. The three need to agree on how they can work together to produce graduates who are skilled enough to contribute to meeting the challenges of the economy and also improve universities (Vaivode, 2015). The universities are expected to provide valuable programmes that are useful to produce employable graduates. Participating managers and graduates were aware of the gap that exists between graduation and the time when underemployment or unemployment surfaces. There exists a notion that the gap is caused by a lack of support by the universities, and industry can bridge this gap through creation of programmes to support the students’ training and development up to graduation level. Training of graduates needs to be for development and support of the whole person in order to make the transition into employment possible.