WinningSun:
the apprentice / hand work market is already getting saturated also...

Dirkcoyt:
You're not serious ! Graduate should turn apprentice?
After reading all through? i ts simply a waste of time to go to the university to become an apprentice of a road side.


What have always propose is, vocational skill acquisition at the roadside while in secondary for good 3 yrs of senior school ss1-3 . after gained skill they will decide to further based on area of skill they have acquire. during their university days the government post them to companies every holiday to learn the professional side. Now they have both skill and field experience. by the time of graduation what you have is a full scale graduate. Then we sponsor the extremely brilliant mind on research works based on scholarship. I mean the first class. Pay them well as researchers in that way we have brilliant minds in out research sector.

not go turn apprentice after years of tiling in university. nonsense!

Dirkcoyt:
You're not serious ! Graduate should turn apprentice?
After reading all through? i ts simply a waste of time to go to the university to become an apprentice of a road side.


What have always propose is, vocational skill acquisition at the roadside while in secondary for good 3 yrs of senior school ss1-3 . after gained skill they will decide to further based on area of skill they have acquire. during their university days the government post them to companies every holiday to learn the professional side. Now they have both skill and field experience. by the time of graduation what you have is a full scale graduate. Then we sponsor the extremely brilliant mind on research works based on scholarship. I mean the first class. Pay them well as researchers in that way we have brilliant minds in out research sector.

not go turn apprentice after years of tiling in university. nonsense!

Caustics:
truckpushing, bricklaying and gutter cleaning are the hottest jobs this year. graduates with good grades can easily apply the be apprentices under professionals in those field.

I know a man who has built 2 bungalows from cleaning gutters.

there is truly dignity in labour

Pavore9:

That is good.

Pavore9:

That is good.

Wiseonetemmy:


I don’t think you had time to read what the OP wrote. From your comment, it will be difficult for you to stay afloat in this emerging economic situation. The OP is simple telling wise graduate( not you obviously) the way to attain success with the present condition. Posts like this should make front page because so many graduates are still in the fairy tale stages of graduate with good grades, get a job, marry and live happily ever after. WAKE UP!!!
By the way, being a graduate is not a waste of time, it will only make you better in whatever vocational skill you chose to learn if you ever learn one.

ObaOloye:
Sorry to say this but i have to. Your grammar, comprehension and pride as a 'graduate' are not a par. Check your dictionary for the meaning of apprentiship and pratice reading and comprehension more.. The Op is simply telling the gospel truth. No company would hire u cos u are a 'graduate' but on your inherent abilities as a person and on your capacity to learn and be productive. We should see being a graduate as class admit card that allows you to enter the market which is based on continous capacity development.

Dirkcoyt:


The both of you are not as smart as I thought! You're so complacent about the status quo that you think is a normal thing for a graduate to turn road side apprentice.

you hear stories of a graduate turn bricklayer, graduate turn akara seller?! is that really what going to university mean? university is meant to solve problem ! to create professional and researcher! if they wanted to be apprentice they would have Leary and just open a shop rather than wasting money and time going to university. a university is an intellectual environment not what we have in this country.


You see, both of you are harping about to make money! if the essence of going to school was making money then you both have a terrible idea what schooling is. schooling is meant to solve environmental problems in the cause of creating solution then the money comes not nonsense you both have there.

I'm talking of solving a futuristic unemployment endemic you're here telling me about rubbish. so much for the education you Have. and you said pride because you're a graduate? graduate should be professionals so they should go low because they are graduate? nonsense!

WinningSun:
the apprentice / handwirk market is already getting saturated also...

IamaNigerianGuy:


I hope you see the contradiction in your post : the whole idea of getting a bachelor's or masters is to escape vocational work and operate on a higher level.

The whole of the original post is survivalist and reactionary. Asking graduates to prepare for a vocational life will not move us forward. It is an inferior solution to our problems no different from the tripe we regularly hear about sending every youth into farming.

If the aspiration in the 60s and 70s was to become a graduate, and it now is to become a technician, you can see how far we have fallen. Correcting that should be the priority - not creating a permanent underclass.

But hey, this is Nigeria where bad ideas always win out.

junglep:
Nice write up, but my take is you could skip university all together if you're going the apprenticeship way.


The idea is to be productive regardless of your level of education.

Once you've gone through secondary, and can read and write,you can learn most skills , especially skills we need in Nigeria.

Furthermore the university level graduates will also benefit from some apprenticeship but more in the sense if work experience.


For example, you don't need to have a degree to learn how to code.

Also if you have a degree in business for example, you might need to upskill as your field of study is too broad.

It doesn't have be gutter jobs at whatever level.


At whatever level of learning, the key is to have a set of skills that will allow you to be productive and empower you to able to pick new skills fast.

IamaNigerianGuy:


I hope you see the contradiction in your post : the whole idea of getting a bachelor's or masters is to escape vocational work and operate on a higher level.

The whole of the original post is survivalist and reactionary. Asking graduates to prepare for a vocational life will not move us forward. It is an inferior solution to our problems no different from the tripe we regularly hear about sending every youth into farming.

If the aspiration in the 60s and 70s was to become a graduate, and it now is to become a technician, you can see how far we have fallen. Correcting that should be the priority - not creating a permanent underclass.

But hey, this is Nigeria where bad ideas always win out.

Opinionated:
By David Adeoye

In those days when many African nations first gained independence (and for the next two decades or so), jobs were plentiful. You hear tales of a graduate getting two or more job offers with a car and sometimes, a residential quarters to match. All on the bill of the employer.

After sometime, it was no longer sufficient to just have a first degree. Only a Master’s degree and or professional qualification would assure such a lofty start. However as the years passed and as both the society and the economy evolved, opportunities for ready jobs with “cool pay” started to dwindle. Attractive jobs in established organizations became competitive.
The economic resurgence of the late 1990s to the early 2000s came with a significant increase in the supply of graduate jobs. New businesses (banks, telcos, IT firms, investment firms, etc) rolled out across the economy on a rather massive scale. Once again, graduates became very much in-demand.

This time, the setting was slightly different: most of the employers were private businesses deploying their own capital, that of other shareholders, and of course borrowed funds from banks, and the bond market. Therefore, recruitment was largely on merit and retention was largely based on performance. Degrees and certificates, though required, had become less important.

In more recent years, the Nigerian economy has seen a marked reduction in the influx of big business. In reality, the economic conditions and our brand of political economy has constrained otherwise big businesses to shrink (in the name of right-sizing, restructuring, refocusing, and those other terms that start with the letter R but never mention retrenchment). Technology has also not helped the fate of the average graduate as a traditional worker, even while it presents immense opportunities for personal growth.

With the rise of technology, and challenging economic conditions, many new businesses now start small, and most older ones aim to be more efficient, more profitable, but not necessarily bigger (at least by headcount). At the same time, the capacity of establishment-type employers to expand their workforce is severely constrained. Budgetary allocations, grants, etc impose a limit.

What do all of this mean for today’s graduate? First, the era of establishment-type jobs with the perks that follow is largely gone. Secondly, today’s employers are far more performance and results-oriented than those of past decades where there was more emphasis on activity and presence. Thirdly, the demand on a graduate’s capacity to contribute at both individual and team level becomes the most important factor in to secure and retain gainful employment.

Now, if capacity to perform has become such a critical element, it is important to ask and get some valid answers to the question: what is the fundamental requirement to perform in a world of service and knowledge work? The answer, to my mind is three-fold: readiness to learn, willingness to work hard, and a disposition to work with others.

In other words, today’s graduate must be willing to accept a first degree for what it really is. Essentially, during the first degree, a person learns to reason and to relate. To build upon this foundation, the individual then has to submit himself or herself to a process of learning something meaningful, specific, and valuable to others. We call this apprenticeship. In the same way that fellows with less formal education have to choose a trade to which he is willing to apply himself or herself.

In the context of today’s work environment, the graduate must see herself first as an apprentice and put the ‘graduate thing’ in the background. An apprentice is first of all, “here to learn”. It’s not about the pay. Rather he’s paying his dues by being on time, attentive, responsive, and above all by being responsible to at least one person: the boss who is then responsible to one set of people: customers. The same way an apprentice aims to be successful at the trade, and not merely follow-the-money, today’s young person with a first degree will have to submit herself to the rudiments and demands of the business.

There are three main ingredients required for an apprentice to be successful: intelligence (or aptitude), interest, and intensity (or how well you apply yourself, call it hard work. On intelligence, there are various types of aptitude, some fellows are gifted with words, some with patterns, some with data, some with music etc. For example, it takes certain traits to be a good tailor or fashion designer. At the same time, not every young person can be a mechanic. In the same vein, not everyone who studied accounting would do well as an auditor. Natural talents provide some guidance for a choice of career.

The second point is interest: what would this young man or woman rather do or contribute to humanity? What drives you? How would you rather work? The combination of intellect and interest manifest in one thing: learning, What are you willing to learn. Permit me to ask in Yoruba: “As a graduate, ise wo l’ofe ko?”. Over the years, I’ve seen many examples that prove this is a far more practical approach than merely sitting, praying, and hoping. Prayer is good but we should direct it at something specific.

Still on knowledge, smartness does not equate to knowledge. You can be smart but empty about certain areas. We all have areas where we are empty. Where we know nothing because we never bothered to, or needed to learn. Many times, what is needed as per intelligence is just a threshold level of aptitude. Often, a more knowledgeable person with the threshold level of IQ would make far better decisions than an uninformed genius.

Lastly, for an apprentice to be successful, he or she must be willing, able, and ready to apply himself with persistence and perseverance. You need to believe the work is both valuable and worth doing. Pouring yourself into what you do, when you’re tired, when others are giving up, is one key trait of world champions. Apply yourself to what you do and someday, you would find yourself at the top.

In a nutshell, it’s not enough to be a graduate. We need to choose to learn something that is both meaningful and valuable and then begin to apply ourselves to what we learn. It may start in a small measure but it will surely lead somewhere great.

Source: http://www.opinions.ng/nigerian-youths-need-make-transition-graduate-apprentice/

cc: Lalasticlala, Mynd44

sunkanmihassan1:
In a nutshell, it’s not enough to be a graduate. We need to choose to learn something that is both meaningful and valuable and then begin to apply ourselves to what we learn. It may start in a small measure but it will surely lead somewhere great.

Xda59:


You are very ignorant, the greatest countries and their economy is driven by nothing else but their technical and vocational powers e.g germany, china, russia, america. What can nigeria produce with all the university graduates roaming the street, they can't even maintain their own refinery talkless of building new ones, they bring in foreign companies to do any little thing because we lack the technical knowhow. The chinese flooding nigeria in their thousands didn't attend any university but they get paid and live like kings in our own country doing the same jobs people like you look down on. You import everything from them up to the shoes you wear thereby boosting their economy in the process to the detriment of your own and when a dollar starts exchanging for five hundred naira, you people will start screaming FG this FG that. You need to wake up because having a first first degree now is just like you having WASSC, so if you think anybody is going to pay you top dollars for having just a bsc, man you are on a long thing. The wise ones, know what the OP is talking about. Some years ago when remedies and co started naija hiphop, alot of people thought they were wasting their time, but today, the likes of dbanj, don jazzy, tuface, olamide and wizkid who didn't see the four walls of a university are known world stars and live better lives than your university professors. Open your eyes and use your head. A word is enough for the wise.

Zacking:

Then relocate to a place where you'll be king

Dirkcoyt:


The both of you are not as smart as I thought! You're so complacent about the status quo that you think is a normal thing for a graduate to turn road side apprentice.

you hear stories of a graduate turn bricklayer, graduate turn akara seller?! is that really what going to university mean? university is meant to solve problem ! to create professional and researcher! if they wanted to be apprentice they would have Leary and just open a shop rather than wasting money and time going to university. a university is an intellectual environment not what we have in this country.


You see, both of you are harping about to make money! if the essence of going to school was making money then you both have a terrible idea what schooling is. schooling is meant to solve environmental problems in the cause of creating solution then the money comes not nonsense you both have there.

I'm talking of solving a futuristic unemployment endemic you're here telling me about rubbish. so much for the education you Have. and you said pride because you're a graduate? graduate should be professionals so they should go low because they are graduate? nonsense!

400billionman:
, No company even employs anyone without sending the fellow for training. Banks Oil Coys Industries, The untrained mind is just like a wild animal, Before, K9 police puts a Dog to police work, they train the dog, talk less of humans