Expert sees bias in Stutern Report on Varsities that produce most employable graduates

The recent report released by Stutern Group in partnership with Jobberman and BudgIT, saying that  graduates from Covenant University were the most employable, followed by the University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, and Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, has been roundly faulted by experts in education and curriculum development, Prof. Dom Unaegbu.

In a telephone interview, the university don said “Such a report is only the figment of a group of people and failed bodies who want to push up the receding influence of certain institutions that have lost their relevance in the comity of highly recognized universities”.

According to him, “There is no prior report that shows that employers pick new graduates based on the institutions they attended because quality of service delivery by individuals have no direct bearing with where one passed out from”.

He cautioned the federal ministry of Education to stop the tendency of some obscure groups using kangaroo reports to run down other schools in Nigeria, saying if this trend is allowed to go on, employers will be deceived and the entire real sector will pay for it.

The Stutern report said, “On our ranking of the best institutions for return on investments, top honours went to University of Ilorin; and none of the private universities made the list. This was measured based on candidates’ starting salary.”

It added that “Over 80 per cent of employed graduates currently earn not more than N150,000  per month. Most graduates earn between N20,000 and N50,000 monthly, both as starting salary and current salary.”

Co-founder, Stutern, Kehinde Ayanleye, said, “Graduate unemployment is a massive waste of resources – 36.26 per cent of our graduates are unemployed. But what could be worse is the under-compensation of talent. It has implications for security, health, and economic growth.”

Prof Unaegbu argued that for a report to say that “most graduates said that communication skills and knowledge of the job were the two least skills their academic institution prepared them for,” is the height of selfish imagination designed only to promote the collapsing fortunes of fading universities.