We are bombarded with news about the gaping budget deficit in this country, but I believe there is a more serious sort of deficit looming, one that saps our independence and enjoyment of life and threatens our country’s future. It’s a deficit of entrepreneurship. A deficit of initiative and a worship of certificates and licenses.
For several decades now, young people have been aggressively pushed onto an academic path leading to a university degree, and entrepreneurship has been ignored. The percentage of young people going to university has increased tremendously over the years. Universities and colleges are cropping up everywhere.
Why do we think getting a degree is so great? Because we’re told that people with degrees have far better prospects. They get better jobs, better husbands and wives, cultivate healthier habits and are generally more successful. Whereas people who don’t get degrees are poorer and get stuck in crummy, dead-end jobs and are at higher risk of becoming total losers and dropping out and burdening the state. As a nation, we worship nervously at the altar of higher education because we think it will equip people to become effective system surfers.
It’s time to explode this myth. Actually, it’s already exploded. It’s pretty much an open secret now that many degrees are useless when it comes to getting a good job, and graduates are the first to admit it. A growing number of them end up in crummy jobs anyway, as well as being in debt and, more worryingly, three to five years behind where they might have been in picking up solid skills and experience in the world of work.
It’s common knowledge that small and medium-sized businesses account for 99% of all companies in Kenya and for more than three-quarters of private-sector employment. This is where the jobs are. Most of these businesses hire according to skill and experience and not academic qualifications. Most don’t need graduate-level skills in their business at all. Yet wave after wave of ambitious people still head off to university, like kamikaze pilots, with a sort of helpless shrug. But what else are they to do? What sane person would buck the trend and decide not to go to university, given the widespread acceptance that higher education offers everyone a better future?
I believe we’re long overdue for a good, alternative vision for education. Learning doesn’t just take place in the classroom or lecture theatre. Why do people who show ability immediately get marked out for academia? And on the flip side, why are millions of people made to feel thick because they don’t respond well to classroom learning and don’t see the point of it? The tragedy is that many people will never come close to reaching their potential because they think they’re stupid. It’s such a waste.
Isn’t it time we acknowledged the role of apprenticeship in wealth and knowledge creation? Now and historically, the world’s greatest entrepreneurs, scientists, artisans, engineers, and teachers were self-taught through self-learning and apprenticeship.
The degree holders and worshipers need to stop demonising and condemning those who have found success and fulfilment outside the academic path.
Maybe it is high time the government embraces model apprenticeship as a professional path to wealth creation. We can’t downplay the hands-on skills these people have or acquire in these academically overrated professions.
