By Ninsiima Precious
Many students in Uganda enrol in different fields to study law, medicine, social work, engineering, and catering among others at various universities and tertiary institutions every year. For this, kudos to all parents/guardians who have continued to support their children at all levels of education and endeavoured to ensure that they obtain a quality education, and can graduate successfully.
Despite the criticism from many people that the Ugandan education system is very theoretical and less practical, as a result, they are unable to put to application what they have studied, leading to a high percentage of unemployed youths in Uganda, yet educated.
The unemployment trend should however not be the position, but rather the graduates should give value to the time that they spent studying as some courses took more than 2 years to accomplish, and secondly, they have attained academic credentials that they have been toiling for.
Therefore, as a graduate, you have got to challenge your mindset from being a jobseeker to being a job creator, through implementing the theory that you study at school to earn a living.
Although most of the time the things you have been learning from lecture rooms are slightly different from what life brings that we have to quickly have to excel in our career, to catch up, you ought to be eager to learn and re-learn, because at times the knowledge, skills and values acquired during education are insufficient for the job implementation, since the time of studies is not enough.
However, there are consultants and experts in the field of your interest, and it is good to embrace and learn from their experiences as this will help you become a better and an innovative person.
In addition to the above, being passionate about your career will enable you to strive hard to thrive in your career and as a result, this will help you to learn how to solve the problems you meet while you toil to meet your life needs and expectations.
Last but not least, although the narrative is that the Ugandan education system is more theoretical rather than practical and has made graduates job seekers and not job creators leading to a higher level of unemployment, my point of view is that the education sector has tried to strike a balance between theory and practicals for example in most course, there’s some bit of practical such as the medical courses require students to go to the hospital and put the theory to practice and the same applies to engineers, teachers who go for teaching practice and also law students, who have moots, which are a simulation of court hearings, among others.
Therefore, at the end of the day, the students not only acquire theoretical knowledge in school but also will practical knowledge, that should enable them to thrive in their careers and overcome the problem of unemployment after graduation.
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The writer; Ninsiima Precious is a fourth-year law student at Uganda Pentecostal University.
