By Nathanael Simbilyabo
For many parents, sending a child to university is more than just an educational decision. It is an investment in the future.
They hope the child will study hard, get a degree, get a job, and build a good life.
But what happens when the last part of that equation does not work out?
The degree as a promise
For years, higher education has been seen as one of the safest routes to economic security. But what do you tell a parent who has struggled to pay tuition when the child graduates and cannot find a job?
And what do you tell the graduate who studied engineering but ends up running a clothing shop, or the law graduate who builds a career in film?
At first, such stories can look like evidence that something has gone wrong. But perhaps that is too simplistic a reason.
Interestingly, this debate about what university is actually meant to do is not new. John Henry Newman, a 19th-century English theologian and educator, argued that university education should develop the intellect and give students a broader understanding of knowledge. John Stuart Mill, an English philosopher, economist, and political thinker, made a related argument in his 1867 inaugural address at St Andrews, suggesting that university should not simply be reduced to professional education.
The idea was that a person is more than their profession.
University, then, was also about developing the person behind the profession — someone who can think critically, understand different perspectives, ask questions and apply knowledge beyond the classroom.
That sounds reasonable.
But when a parent is struggling to pay tuition, intellectual development alone may not feel enough. They want to know whether their child will be able to build a life. And that is a fair question.
So, what should universities prepare students for?
It has been seen that a student can earn excellent grades and still leave the university without knowing how to manage a project, communicate with a client, use digital tools or deal with a problem they have never encountered before. This does not mean every university should become an entrepreneurship centre. Neither should universities abandon subjects such as history, philosophy, literature and the social sciences simply because they do not immediately lead to a job. Society still needs people who can think deeply, question assumptions, research and understand difficult ideas.
The real challenge is finding a balance.
Students need academic knowledge, but they also need experience. They need theory, but they should know how to use it. They need qualifications, but they also need to learn the ability to adapt.
Rethinking graduation
Students also need to rethink graduation. It should not necessarily mean that education has ended and employment should immediately begin. A graduate may not end up working in the field written on their certificate. That does not automatically mean they, or the university have failed.
The graduates of the future may therefore need to be more than a specialist and keep learning throughout their working life.
So, is university still important?
Yes. But perhaps not for the reasons we have traditionally known them for.
Parents should ask not only which course will get their child a job, but also what kind of person that education will help their children to become.
Students should ask not only whether their degree will get them work or their dream job, but what they can do with what they are learning.
And universities should ask whether they are preparing young people for the world that actually exists, rather than simply the world for which their programmes were originally designed.
Universities such as the Uganda Christian University are increasingly trying to cope with the problem using methods like competence-based learning and assessment. These strategies can assist universities in moving away from merely awarding degrees and concentrate on ensuring that students acquire skills that will help them adapt to changes in the world around them.
Perhaps the degree no longer guarantees the future.
But perhaps education was never meant to guarantee the future.
Perhaps its purpose is to prepare us for a future we cannot guarantee.
