Top grades don’t translate to jobs and success

I think I am having a feeling of déjà vu. Did you watch ‘First Class Betrayal’ on TV?

Kelvin Ochieng Obede scored an ‘A’ in KCSE and graduated with a first-class honours degree in Actuarial Science. He went on to secure a graduate role with PWC and recently moved to Deloitte as an associate.

That would be the typical education success story. Instead, Kelvin missed his graduation because he couldn’t afford the Sh4,000 graduation fee, ended up homeless, and now works as a car washer earning Sh50 per car!

If this is the fate of a top-tier student in Kenya, can we genuinely keep telling children that education is the be-all and end-all in life?

Kelvin is not the first outstanding student to suffer such bad fate. Remember John Kariuki, the Starehe Boys alumnus? He too scored an A and graduated, only to end up homeless and jobless.

We need to agree education is there to teach us adequate life and technical skills to empower us to live a self-made life.

Education is no longer the prerequisite for getting a job. If it were, first-class graduates who take to social media to exemplify the betrayal at hand would all have jobs.

The truth is that we live in a society where jobs go to tribal factions and the child of so-and-so.

While Kelvin ticks all the qualification boxes and his grades should speak for themselves, if he doesn’t have anyone whispering in his corner, he is competing in an uneven playing field.

The other sad reality is we are churning out so many graduates. Many of them did as they were told and got their first-class degrees, only to find the market is now saturated with graduates and not enough jobs for all of them.

Yes, Kelvin got a first-class, but so did James, John and Peter.

If Kelvin doesn’t stand out from the other three in his application or his interview skills leave a lot to be desired, he will keep “tarmacking”.

It doesn’t help that a lot of organisations do not offer feedback after an unsuccessful interview, leaving graduates always wondering what they could have done differently.

With no feedback, the graduate perpetuates the same mistakes over the next interviews, with every rejection lowering his self-esteem further and he eventually gives up.

It is not that they are not great, smart or qualified enough, they just don’t interview well. And don’t even get me started on institutional bias!

You may graduate with a first-class degree but the university you went to is a key factor in determining whether you get that job.

A first-class degree from Oxford University will be preferred over one from anywhere in the country.

The harsh reality is that even for our own institutions, there is a hierarchy of degrees in tandem with the ranking and each institution’s history.

And so children, we have fed you a fallacy that having an education and good grades directly translates to a job and lifelong success.

Education, coupled with so many other factors – some of which are within your control – may contribute to success.

As we move to a competency-based curriculum, I hope children gain the knowledge and learn life skills to succeed in life.