It is amazing how the tables turn in the world. When I was in school, my dad and the community around me had me memorize a few sentences in regards to education. The definition of the door to success.
- A good education will open doors
- Education is all you need to succeed in life
- "I am where I am because I went to school" I totally admired anyone who used this phrase.
With this, I developed a mentality that doing well in school was all I needed to be successful in life. Or did I? Maybe up t high school. By then the traditional education curriculum in my country seemed to have eroded. I could identify many graduates who had papers and no jobs. They were " tarmacing" a word used to refer to people knocking on the doors asking for jobs. At that time I remember my aunt had a degree in Education and no job, yet there was a shortage of teachers. Got me asking -we have graduates and we have a shortage-, supply and demand, then why aren't the laws of economics applicable?
I asked around why the situations were changing. After all going to school was supposed to guarantee you success. Humans are so adaptive. Immediately the story changed. Some degree courses became "a waste of time" and others were labeled "golden". The students with below a grade of B would then automatically go to study BSc "Kila kitu" or "mchanganyiko" meaning bachelors in science general or Education courses. The A students got to pick, medicine, engineering, computing name it the golden courses.
The world was no longer working as our parents knew it. The ripple effects if you can allow me to call that started with Privately self-sponsored students (PSSP) in the universities. The students had parents with money muscle but had not acquired the grades required to be sponsored by the government. A very good move for the parents. Give your kids the best, but the worst move to have encouraged the universities to take. They started to see the PSSP students as money cows. Focusing more on admitting more PSSP, setting up satellite campuses to accommodate them so as to make more money.
Remember we still had a shortage of teachers, lecturers, too. As the number of students kept going up, we kept opening more campuses. We gave birth to sessional lecturers, I am not saying they were bad, but no one really vets most of them. If you have that paper (maybe, a masters, " simama pale mbele wewe funza. Again we do not have to pay you per month, we also dont't have to give you a contract. Unataka kuitwa mwalimu wewe ni teacher. Can you see the trend? Where, was all the money going? Mismanagement. And the education quality, the poorest we have seen in a while and all this time we are graduating pools of graduates in the thousands.
Come to universities; we give so many charters, void of facilities. Students are more on a theoretical basis and hands-on practice for the courses that require that is nothing but luxury. They are still paying fees, and they will graduate with a course like BSc Computer Engineering. We all know technology evolves very fast. Our curricula are never updated. For some part you have to be thankful it was all theoretical because if it was practical you would be practising on materials from the 2000s. Too old. Then come to our teachers, they are not given a chance to update their skills as things evolve, they are not facilitated to do that. Now they have been reduced to boycotts and strikes because even the government cannot honour an agreement to pay them their dues.
And all this is supposed to keep the students calm? You separate them to gold, platinum, silver, and bronze, to some extent copper. No. it is not happening. They have been reduced to instruments to be used by politicians. Strikes that sometimes turn violent in schools including arson. Most of them are already running online businesses tunasema wameona mbele. Those graduate before them are still tarmacing and others have given up hope of ever finding formal employement. That is a fairly tale of the past. After all, how can you impress your employers when they ask you about latest technologies and your teacher taught you Facebook. Also remember, you were so demotivated in school and in your life, in general, you care less about increasing your knowledge beyond the HTML language that your teacher taught you. So in an interview when they ask you " how about python?" you are ready to run out of the room thinking it is a snake behind you. So someone asks, are graduates in kenya useless? Well, I am a graduate and I am not.
The get rich quick schemes are not helping either, the cryptocurrency craze, which has led to the rise of pyramid schemes. People running scams in broad daylight. Yet, giving advise to those investing in them you sound like you are speaking a foreign language * wewe wachwa hapo sisi tutakuwa matajiri. What can I say * ile radi itawapiga bado iko kwa press-ups. Learn, research, take risks, but informed risks. Also, avoid shooting the advisers, we have been there before.
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So the experiences I have had in the last few years since graduating have taught me a lot. Skill is learned, and you have to want to learn. Your attitude will determine how far you go. That education my dad fancied for me too much. I got it. But that is just the key to the door. The other steps from the door, I have to take them day by day. I have to be willing to be taught, to be criticized, and to move with people. More so, I have to focus on getting on the same wavelength with people with similar interest, people who are advanced to mentor me. While at that I need to also identify younger talent in the same interest that I can mentor myself.
In the end, it is all a chain of exchange, there will be willing givers and unwilling givers and those who outright shut the door on my face. The most important thing is to remember VALUE, ATTITUDE AND NEVER GIVE UP. Eventually, someone notices and gives you a break, listens to you and identifies with you and that my friends are the REAL SUCCESS TO ME.