A new study indicates that university graduates have a 95% chance of getting a job, compared to 58% for non-matriculants.
|||Cape Town - If you are a university graduate, you stand a 95 percent chance of getting a job - compared to just 58 percent for those who have completed less than 12 years of schooling.
This is according to a new study by the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) on university graduates who were employed in 2011.
“The myth that graduates in general, and black graduates in particular, are struggling to find work needs to be put to bed,” said the report’s authors, Ann Bernstein, Antony Altbeker and Evelien Storme. “South African employers (public and private) desperately need skilled and educated workers.”
The study defined graduates as having a bachelor’s degree or higher from any South African university. South Africa currently has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world - 24.9 percent, or about 4.5 million people, according to Stats SA. However, the expanded definition of unemployment, which includes discouraged job seekers, gives a rate of 35.9 percent, or 7.5 million people.
The CDE’s study found that black graduates now account for half of all graduates in the workforce, as their numbers have trippled from 200 000 in 1995 to 600 000 in 2011.
During the same period, the number of degree holders in the labour market grew from 463 000 to 1.1 million.
“Our data gives the lie to the claim that high graduate unemployment indicates that business has failed to transform itself,” said the authors. “Not only is unemployment among graduates low, an increasing number of graduates emerging from the universities are black and levels of unemployment - including among black graduates - have fallen.”
The research, commissioned by the CDE, was undertaken by Professors Sevaas van der Berg and Hendrik van Broekhuizen from Stellenbosch University’s economics department.
jan.cronje@inl.co.za
Cape Times