Higher Education and Labor Market in Ethiopia: A Tracer Study of Graduate Employment in Engineering from Addis Ababa and Bahir Dar Universities
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Date
2016-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This study was designed to examine the linkages between higher education and labor market in Ethiopia with particular focus on the factors influencing employment opportunities of engineering graduates from Addis Ababa and Bahir Dar Universities. For the success, the study was guided by multiple theories like: human capital, labor market segmentation, search and matching, status attainment, signaling, and social capital theories which used to develop the Meta-conceptual framework that relates the entire process of the study. In addition, the research was guided by a Pragmatism Paradigm involving mixed methods research and the collection of quantitative and qualitative data. The research design was tracer study in a comparative perspective whereby attempts were made to collect data from 161 engineering graduates of the 2012 cohorts, 18 employers, 16 higher education teachers and relevant documents through pilot tested questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and document analysis, respectively. In order to respond to the research questions raised, analysis was made from the encoded data using EXCEL, SPSS version 20, STATA IC 14 and NVivo 11 softwares; Mendeley 1.16.1 software was also used to manage references. The information was scrutinized with different calculations such as frequencies, percentages, Chi-square tests, independent samples t-Tests, factor analysis, multinomial logistic regression analysis, and exponentials. From the results, it is traced that the employment status of 2012 engineering graduates of AAU-AAiT and BDU-BiT is found to be too late to the majority in terms of duration after graduation; even for those engineering graduates who are able to secure jobs within six-months time, the main employer in the Ethiopian labor market tends to be the public institutions, followed by private institutions, while the self-employment category remains to be minimal. Moreover, the supportiveness of variables related to HEIs, and the competencies required by the employers are found to be at a reasonable status but which calls for strengthening. The computed statistic to test if the university attended by graduates, fields of study, and other socio-biographical data including other higher education related variables have something to do with the status and length of job search reveal that, for most variables, there are no statistically significant relationships. Further, the contributions observed through descriptive data about the roles of prior education, gender, CGPA appeared with no statistically significant relationships to length of job search. From the findings, it is recommended that since development is believed to be unthinkable with the sole labour market window of public institutions, efforts shall be made by policy makers on expanding the private labour market, and the universities themselves are supposed to produce job-creators than job-seekers. Policy makers and stakeholders shall work collaboratively on how to address the employment and employability of graduates through expanding the private sector employment opportunities. Besides, the importance of propagating on the benefits of job-creation, encouragement of engineering graduates to find a job by setting up their own businesses; and providing the necessary supports was suggested to be the concern of policy makers, universities and all other stakeholders rather than to left for chances. Finally, the implications of this study to future researchers was recommended mainly in a way that encourages them to embark on tracer studies of this kind, either inland by extending scope and increasing variables or if possible, examine the issue on comparative lenses across nations
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Philosophy