This article was first published on the New Vision website on May 4, 2023
By Vision Reporter
Victoria University has launched a career readiness and employability programme to nurture students to enter the workforce with knowledge, skills, and attitudes related to a particular career path.
The University has unveiled its 2023 Career Ambassador and launched a new education turn-around model, the VU Block Model, meant to change higher education teaching on the continent, and an overseas placement programme for university graduates.
“Through our Career Readiness and Employability Programme, we nurture our students to enter the workforce with knowledge, skills, and attitudes related to a particular career path. It includes a range of factors such as education, work experience, and vocational training,” the Vice Chancellor Lawrence Muganga said in a press statement.
“The Career Readiness and Employability programme is an avenue that reinforces authenticity for our students, influencing them to be globally relevant and impactful, not only academically, but also in their contribution to their society’s well-being. Through this Programme, the University continues to reveal its unwavering commitment to being recognized as one of the top innovation universities in the country and the world.”
The University also said the CR&E programme opens up students and graduates to more significant opportunities for global advancement and a broader labour market.
“Our graduates have secured companies abroad willing to employ them as soon as they graduate. Some will travel in and out of the country during the summer for work under our IT and Tourism and Hospitality Programme for Graduates and students in Germany, thanks to Arbeitsvermittlung Westfalen-Lippe company in Germany. In the United Kingdom, we have partnered with CWG Recruit to support our graduate nurses and midwives to secure employment placements,” the statement read in part.
“As part of the CR&E Programme, today, we are also happy to launch our 2023 Career Ambassador, Sheebah Karungi. Sheebah is the true epitome of perseverance and hard work. Her success story is a testament to every young person’s potential, and we are proud to have her as our 2023 Career Ambassador. She dreamt big to excel amidst several storms in her life; we teach, believe, and support all our students to dream big, and she will be a living example for them. Sheebah was born and raised by a single mother in Kawempe, a Division, and suburb of Kampala, the capital city of Uganda. Despite dropping out of school in Senior Two, she started dancing for money at 15 and developed a successful solo career in music.”
For the Career Readiness and Employability programme to succeed Muganga said the country must change the way students are taught.
“We must crash the outdated teaching methods that do not deliver quality education and switch to a new way of teaching and segmenting what we teach. Someone had to do something about this country’s higher education, and we have decided to take a new path, and we are very intentional about this,” he said.
“It is also important to note that we have been teaching the same way for hundreds of years now, but the world around us has changed, and along with it, employer and industry needs have hugely changed and will not stop changing. So, we changed how students learn at VU with Africa’s First VU Block Model.Two years ago, we started the Work Integrated Learning Programme. Students must are placed in a natural working environment as part of the curriculum for every Programme we host at this University. Upon admission at Victoria University, we start with the Career Readiness and Employability Programme, and students later join the Work Integrated Learning stage, where students are sent to various companies, schools, and industries when we know they can fit in the real world of work, even before graduation, with no hassle. In certain instances, they are even far better than the graduates.”
Traditionally, universities juggles the demands and deadlines of six modules (course units) simultaneously.
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