Why employers prefer graduates from foreign schools —Experts

There are indications that companies continue to prefer foreign certified employees and managers than the indigenous ones.

Human resources professionals have shown that graduates with Bachelor’s degree certificate, Master’s degree certificate or professional certificates from foreign universities are more sought after than their counterparts with the same certificates in the country.

This was confirmed by a recent survey conducted by Phillips Consulting which revealed that most employers believed that foreign universities produced graduates with better employable skills than those produced by tertiary institutions in Nigeria. As such, employers in oil and gas and consulting sectors prefer them to graduates from Nigerian universities. Continue....

The education and employability report noted that the collaboration between employers and tertiary institutions in curriculum design and graduate recruitment processes appeared to be inadequate.

While graduates view qualification as the most important requirement for getting a job, employers rate skills and attitude as the imperatives, it revealed.

Moreover, experts noted that this inclination stemmed from the ability of foreign certified graduates to display innovative methods of executing tasks, as a result of what they had been exposed to.

In addition, their eloquence and dedication to work are seen has employable skills employers seek.

In an interview, the President of Human Capital Association of Nigeria, Mr. Neye Enigma, admitted that the performance of a company is related to the strength of its human capital, adding that graduates from Nigerian tertiary institutions have not been able to outperform graduates from foreign institutions.

He said, “In terms of quality, we cannot match the foreign graduates. Companies are looking for the best because they know that what they are looking for is human capital, it is not machinery, and it is not finance. I have been in the corporate world and I know. What makes the difference is the human capital.

“An organisation can have equipment and machinery, but if they don’t have the right people to drive them, they will not achieve the right results. Companies, especially multinationals are looking for the best human capital to help them achieve results. The human factor is very vital, therefore anywhere employers can get it, they go for it,” he added.

The president stressed, “The world has become a global village and they can get the right people anywhere. Like companies in Nigeria, if they compare graduates from foreign universities especially an American or European university with their Nigerian counterparts, they experience a world of difference.”

Enigma expressed his displeasure with the nation’s educational system presently being bedevilled by industrial action, hindering it from producing the best in terms of human capital.

He flayed the poor infrastructure in the country that frustrate educational pursuit, adding that outdated curriculum, inadequate teaching materials and poor learning environment are impediments.

He noted, “In a system where the universities are shut down for 11 months in a year and when they resume, they rush the students, how can we get the best? A system in which we don’t have the right facilities and infrastructure. In the libraries, you find out that there are outdated books and the science laboratories are not well equipped. Will you compare that to a place where everything is available?

“The electricity to power computers for learning is not regular. Do you compare this with someone who is schooling in an environment where there is regular electricity 24 hours in seven days? Is it a system in which there are small classes of 20 to 30 students, compared to our universities where there are up to 200 students in a lecture hall where students at the back are not listening.”

He reiterated that the outdated curriculum, limited budgetary allocation to tertiary institutions and siphoning of budgeted funds often hampered the delivery of employable human capital to companies.

On his part, the Registrar and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. ‘Dele Togunde, said that the weak values system in the country affected the overall performance of personnel, adding that the educational standard in other countries encouraged learning.

He stressed that the nonchalant attitude of students to acquiring knowledge and the pursuit of money rather than excellence in service delivery were common among Nigerians.

The registrar said, “I used to argue that what has affected Nigeria is our values system where we have monetised most things. Nigerians who are trained in this country, when they get to these foreign countries, they dictate things. The enabling environment over there makes them do well. Our environment is affecting our training and output.”

“People want educational qualification but they don’t want the process of acquiring it. Some of us who are involved in training have discovered that some of them just want to get the certificate without actually acquiring the knowledge,” he added.

However, despite the weak values system, if the present curriculum is followed logically with relevant training in the country, dedicated Nigerians could still acquire relevant knowledge.

Togunde said, “I don’t see any reason why a Nigerian will obtain his or her first degree abroad if we organise ourselves here. The issue is that if people obey the dictates of the curriculum, and submit themselves for training, I am telling you that Nigerians will excel.

He said,”The idea of preference for foreign institutions’ graduate against our graduates is born out of the fact that our own environment is tinted with corruption of many sorts. The environment where the graduates from other countries are coming from will not allow students to cheat or practise nepotism.

“Is it not the same society that produced the likes of Prof. Wole Soyinka? Is it not this same society that produced Chinua Achebe and late Mrs. Dora Akunyili of blessed memory?

“We need to re-orientate ourselves, Nigerians should seek knowledge and every other thing will be added to them, “he noted.