Masukuma i want to agree with you but also i do not understand what the problem is in Kenya.

In other countries i hear people who have left corporate world go back to teach in the universities and i believe they impact very useful skills

Did i hear for example Sir Alex Ferguson teaches at Harvard?

i wonder why for example someone like Martin Oduor cannot teach leadership at UON? or say someone like Dr James Mwangi of Equity Bank? are these not the right people to teach leadership/Management courses for example or strategy at the universities

Recently i enrolled for a PhD in leadership and governance at JKUAT and i can tell you the lecturers teaching the course are people who have nothing much to offer

They are teaching for the money and have never been in any leadership positions

The only thing i may get is the paper but not really what i was looking for

Can someone like former president Kibaki go and teach at UON?

is it that these calibre of people are too busy to teach?

I heard somewhere Dakitari Bitange Ndemo anatafuna chalk somewhere in kabete - some of them do, actually I remember sometime back I was invited to give a talk to some MBA students hupo cuea on entrepreneurship, some lectures are pretty good at instilling real life skills to their students.

hata kuho majuu, there are some lectures who have been in school all their lives with little or no outside experience.

Lakini congrats for the PhD, but sasa leadership and governance utapata kazi wapi?

I just hope you didn't talk to those students about non employability skills

What exactly do employers mean when they say the graduates are half-baked? The problem at hand is our education system...Unless we say the universities are producing un-trainable graduates, then I wonder what exactly we are talking about. Why? Because most of the skills that we apply in our day to day jobs were never taught in school. Companies train their staff on the specific jobs they have hired them to do. Each and every company have its unique way of doing things to a great extent :

Eg Think of three University graduates who did Sales and Marketing and are employed by Safaricom, EABL and Barclays. If they are put in charge of growing a specific product line, each of these companies will have to take them through training so as to align them to the specific companies' strategy, markets, systems, etc. When at campus, I dont think the university will give the students training specific to any company or any product.

Think of Accounts Graduate. Once they are out of school and they get employed in different companies, they will go and find the companies are using different accounting systems...from different software providers, which will be changed periodically every time the senior managers feels they need to "eat" through procuring a different system.

What is being taught in school and what is happening out here is very very different. Unless the education system is changed and remains dynamic in the changes, employers will continue complaining. After all even most of the lecturers teaching in those schools have never been to the real job situation thus they got nil experience on how it actually happens on the ground. It doesnt matter how fluently one can recite theories of economics, once you are thrown to a financial institution to run even a section like treasury you will realize it takes much more than what was taught in class. That is why I find the executive MBA in strathmore much more realistic way of teaching university students than these other MBAs with 1000 people in a single class as if its a Comm Skills 101 class.

Universities may only give you the ability to use your brain coherently and critically. Beyond that, what will be most important is the right ATTITUDE. That way you may be trained to do anything out here.

How can FKE work with university bosses to develop the right curriculum?

@washiku. When employers say graduates are half-baked, they mean they are not the finished product.

You see, after years in university, you should be able to communicate, know how to spell, know how to solve basic work-related hitches. How can i employ you as an assistant, then go on spelling every other word to you? HOW? Keep on showing you how to use Microsoft Excel, yet a are a graduate in B.Com accounting option, with several computing certificates with spreadsheet on all of them?

In short, be of meaningful use to the employer.

If you have done accounts but cannot solve simple mathematical problems, there's trouble. A graduate who doesn't know South Africa's currency, there is trouble. Doesn't know where Switzerland is [continent-wise], there's trouble.

Biggest TROUBLE of them all, they don't seem to know that they are employed to work. They are more interested in showing up at work place and behaving as if they are doing you favors by WORKING.

I think the youth stopped thinking with the advent of private universities and para. I mean, how can you be working for a bank or foreign affairs ministry and know less than a layman? HOW?

Compare current graduates and those of 80s and early 90s. Those guys know virtually everything.

All the above is from personal experience.

Was trying to explain something concerning Jebel Ali to a graduate,when she paused and asked 'who's jebel ali.?
She couldn't even tell the diff btwn an original and a photocopied doc!
Eventually I was forced to ask,do you know vera sidika and nishike?