In every discourse revolving around unemployment, education is deemed to be a key component. Education increases the volume of employables. This in turn indirectly increases the level of unemployment. This is certainly true in the short run, if what is meant is that education itself is a labour-intensive industry, education is a type of social investment because it renders people more productive.
But in what way is it more productive? By teaching children manual or mechanical skills they could not have acquired elsewhere? True for certain specific professions, but surely not true in general. By imparting “developmental” values and attitudes?
But can schools do this; and if so, how do they do it? Unless we know that, we cannot be sure that more education would impart more of these appropriate values. Perhaps schools only sort out children in terms of their native drives and aptitudes, in which case there may be better and cheaper sorting machines than the educational system. In other words, the proposition is likely to be misleading unless the relevant period is specified and unless the sense in which education is said to be an “investment” is explained.
Still, another interpretation of the proposition before us is that education is a necessary input into certain activities for which there is an effective demand but which cannot now be produced at all; in other words, there are manpower shortages and these shortages inhibit the growth of output. No doubt there are still examples around the world which are capable of supporting this extremely simple reason for expanding education, but they are rapidly becoming harder and harder to find. Even some of the remaining examples are spurious: if there is a shortage of plumbers that holds back the construction industry, it is usually because the scarcity of plumbers has not been allowed to raise wages of plumbers; or because plumbing equipment cannot be imported owing to foreign exchange control; or because there is no shortage of plumbers as such but only of good plumbers, a problem which cannot be solved simply by training more plumbers.
The notion that education causes unemployment we must take at its face value, this is wrong. What it meant, however, is that there is something about education that makes people unemployable; it raises their aspirations beyond all hope of satisfying them; it gives them the wrong skills or the wrong attitudes. There is something in this argument, but the point about aspirations is true of the entire development process. Imagine if there was no education, surely the complaint would be that these countries are poor because they do not want to better themselves?
If the skills and attitudes now fostered by educational systems are wrong, what would be the right skills, of course, and attitudes of self-reliance? But what is a vocational skill? One that can be turned directly into the production of saleable output? Surely, this is better learnt on the job? Is it instead a foundation which expedites on-the-job learning? If so, that is what schools aim to do. If it is too specific, it will not serve the need of every student: and if it is general, why call it a vocational skill? As for self–reliance, we have yet to learn how to instil it, although admittedly, traditional education makes a poor job of it.
Furthermore, it is not just education that converts underemployment into open employment but the entire development process. The real problem is that education absorbs resources, so educated unemployment is a more serious economic problem than open unemployment as such; it represents a using – up of resources that might have been devoted to creating employment opportunities. All too true, and yet not the whole story. If the labour market worked smoothly and more or less instantly, it would long ago have adjusted to the excessive demand for education by reducing the earning differentials between more educated and less educated people to zero. And if the labour market does not work smoothly and works only with long lags, there may be educated unemployment even though education is heavily funded. Thus, educated unemployment must be attached both in terms of educational finance and in terms of labour market policies.
To attempt a decisive answer to the question of unemployment would be presumptuous.
But a stab at an answer would run as follows: If the less developed countries maintain their present growth rates, the problem in the foreseeable future will indeed remain that of unemployment heavily concentrated aged 20 to 35. On the other hand, there is no easy remedy in sight for youth unemployment and educated unemployment.
The present tendency of educational systems to grow more quickly at the top rather than at the bottom of the educational ladder must somehow be reversed, which can be achieved only by a restructured pattern of educational finance combined with intervention in labour markets. To reverse these trends does mean that we shall cure educated unemployment only to create or to aggravate the “school leaver problem” but the remedy for the school leaver problem, at least in the short run, lies in the provision of out-of-school education.
In the long run, it lies in curriculum reform, examination reform and the improvement of teacher training. It may not be a very exciting prospect for those who hanker for quick results, convinced that there is somewhere a clever idea never previously considered which will solve all our difficulties overnight. But here, as elsewhere, it is “piece-meal social engineering” which I believe will prove to be the method by which we shall eventually solve the problem.
*(Reverend Jan A Scholtz is the former chairperson of the //Kharas Regional Council and former !Nami#nus constituency councillor and is a holder of a Diploma in Theology, B-Theo (SA), a Diploma in Youth Work and Development from the University of Zambia (UNZA), a Diploma in Education III (KOK) BA (HED) from UNISA.