Amid growing concerns that universities are producing graduates for a job market that no longer exists, Professor Densil A. Williams, pro-vice chancellor and principal of The University of West Indies (The UWI), Mona, says every effort is being made to train graduates who are adaptable and can meet the demands of the current and future job market.

“As a university, we are very clear in our minds that we are educating a student so that they can be fit for any eventualities in society. We are not just training a student because we are not a training institute per see, we are a higher educational institution, we educate you and education makes you become trainable and you can move on,” Williams expressed.

He was speaking at the university’s first press conference for 2024 held at the Council Room, The Senate Building, The UWI Mona Campus.

“What we are doing is to make sure that all our programmes and courses reflect the dynamics of the market. So I can speak specifically for example when we were in the business school at Mona, what we did was to revamp our curriculum structure and how we advance new programmes. The first thing we did was to have discussions with the industry and ask the industry what are the things you would like to see from our graduates. We have now gone on to say let us discuss how is it we incorporate these things within our courses and programmes and therefore when our programmes are approved we ensure that the things that the industry says that they want are there as well but we don’t build our programmes entirely around industry, “

PROFESSOR DENSIL WILLIAMS

The UWI Mona principal pointed out that programmes are also structured to facilitate interaction between students and industries.

“One of the things we do in the business school now is that every new master’s programme that has come on board, they have to have a three-month window where the students have to interact to industry. So all new programmes that are being designed they have to have some interactions,” Williams said.

“We are making a significant transformation in terms of preparing our students for the world of work but as I said before we do more than just prepare you for the world of work we are educating you so that you are quite nimble to move from any job any market any industry and I think that is the value added of a university like ours compared to a university that is actually training people for a particular market,” he added.

Importantly, The UWI Mona principal further underscored that training graduates for a particular job market creates the possibility for structural unemployment when an economy restructures.

“The challenge you face when you go that route of just mere training is that once the economy restructures, you would appreciate that you going to have significant structural unemployment and you don’t want to do that because you don’t know the length of time between the restructuring and the upgrading of skills to get to the new economy,” he explained.