You open the post box, taking out the long awaited letter officially telling you that you have qualified as a graduate.
Invite, outfit, attire (gown, hood, mortar board): CHECK!!!!
All is ready waiting for the big day where you will be awarded for all your hard work, pain, and suffering and enduring student life. This should be the time of your life where you enjoy the fruits of your hard labour, the actual promotion from student life to the working class, but does this really happen? Honeymoon period OVER now let’s fast forward to reality!
There are so many graduates rating from Diplomas to Honours and Masters sitting at home with their qualifications gathering dust. You cannot help asking yourself, “was it worth it for me to spend these endless nights burning the candle studying while my peers were having a good time?” Mind you, my ex high school mates are currently working and driving their second cars. Look at it this way after matric I commenced my studies towards a degree while my peers got employed and currently possess four solid years of working experience.
Honestly where is the credit for a graduate who had to go to school despite all odds to secure a better future for themselves, NFAS and grannies pension fund being the only support they depended on. Then to graduate, go home, loaf around be a temp maid for those who are going to work, where is the justice for an unemployed graduate? Interns and in- service trainings are not justifications of support given to graduates. To make it worse these government departments have adopted a new tendency of requesting for three years experience for entry level junior positions. As rhetorical as this may sound where is a fresh graduate with 6 months in- serve experience expected to get this three years experience from to obtain level entry?
I will keep asking this question until someone answers me what support is being given to our unemployed graduates?
Mr. Government please intervene while our qualifications are collecting dust at home before we even get tempted into turning to other means of living.
Akhona Ngcobo
Thank you for this. Being an unemployed graduate must be one of the worst things. And parents seem to think you remain unemployed on purpose. But if the world won’t give you a way, we must pave our own way.