Fostering Graduate Employability: Rethinking Tanzania’s University Practices

Abstract

Globalization, partly spurred by technological innovation such as artificial intelligence and robotics, continues to disrupt not only economic trajectories and business models, especially in the developed world, but also the knowledge and skill requirements for graduates entering the labor market. A growing corpus of literature on graduates’ employability has identified barriers to employment ranging from skills mismatch to a lack of soft skills. Although the literature on graduate employability is informative and illuminating, the role of university practices in fostering graduate employability in sub-Saharan Africa, and Tanzania in particular, has been less studied. Drawing on the broader employability literature, this article provides a comprehensive analysis of the best university practices in an effort to address the unemployment problems of university graduates in sub-Saharan Africa and Tanzania in particular. Four critical university best practices for fostering graduate employability are of interest—developing effective university—industry partnerships, aligning university education with a country’s development plans, regular university curriculum reviews, and strengthening quality assurance systems. Therefore, this article contributes to the higher education literature on the role of university practices in fostering graduate employability.