Why Are Most of Our Graduates Functionally Illiterate?

Education is an important aspect of life that can go on to shape our lives. Be it formal or informal education, what matters is the knowledge gained, the reason we delve into it, and the result it yields in the long run. I remember when I was young, we were often being told that education is the key to success, which we all believed, and told it seriously so we could succeed. However, that doesn't seem to be the case anymore with the rate at which the standard of education keeps declining and the rising numbers of unemployed graduates on the street.

Back in the day I heard people didn't even need to apply for jobs, as companies and organizations often went to the institution to book their graduate to work with them. Nowadays the reverse is the case, as we have just about half the available jobs for over thousands of graduates being produced yearly. There's a need to work on creating more job opportunities, encouraging entrepreneurship, skills acquisition, and the like, so that youth won't just graduate from the university with nothing to do and a whole life ahead of them.

I can't go without also criticizing our education system, which has become more porous over the years. You'll be shocked to come across some of the graduates being produced from this institution who can't even read a single sentence without biting their tongue, not to mention their inability to even pinpoint one or two things they learned during their school days. It's quite disheartening, as these are some of the results of a failed system born from educators' greed and the government's unwillingness to improve the quality of education.

You'll see lecturers who don't attend lectures at all, and you would still give out exams at the end of the semester, and so they'll ask students to bribe them to get good grades. I've seen loads of students do this, and at the end of the day, intelligent and hardworking students will score less than cheaters who paid their way to having good grades. Others even pay in kind, that's with their body. This is often done by female students, and that's often called sex for grades, whereby students get laid by lecturers so they turn, give them good grades.

All of these acts have further crumbled our education system, and for us to have a refined education system, there might be a need for a complete overhaul of the entire system. You can imagine a few years ago when trying to register for my national identity card, I got there and got a form to fill in my details so it'll be processed inside the office, only for me to raise my hand up and see a line of about 8 youths standing in front of me and hoping I'll help them fill out their forms when I'm done with mine.

On completing mine and listening to their details, I get to some of them are graduates or presently students at the university and polytechnic, and yet it's surprising that someone who has attained such a height in education won't be able to fill a simple form that inquires about information about themselves. That's a perfect example of how bad the situation is and the need to implement changes in every aspect to bring about a lasting change that improves education and teaching-learning procedures in the country, also making educational resources available, including facilities and equipment.

All photos are mine.