Abstract:

This is a exploratory study of this researcher’s PhD scholarship investigating gainful self-employment among tertiary education graduates in Uganda, an action research (AR) study of Ankole Western University (AWU)’s programme of skilling students and alumni. It is exploratory case study, enabling the researcher to gain more in-depth knowledge of one or a few cases that are thought to exemplify key features of gainful self-employment. The emphasis of exploratory analysis is more on avoiding statistical tests’ Type II errors (accepting a false null hypothesis), than falsification—avoiding Type I errors (incorrectly rejecting a true null hypothesis). The study puts a lot more emphasis on the plea that self employment should be the goal of education in Uganda than on the vision and role that training institutions right now have and need to make the shift from delivering jobseekers to job creators. It examined the students’ labour market perceptions, experiences and expectations; new ways of preparing students that readies them to face the realities of the labour market; and the ingredients for educational institutions to develop a model of enhancing the transition to gainful self-employment.  Data was collected using focus group discussion from student social entrepreneurs, the AWU students, lecturers, faculty deans and the University management; and from an interview of Sheema District Commercial Officer. The findings highlight the polarization of positive and negative students’ perceptions towards self-employment and call for vocationalizing university studies—call for scraping of the Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education, also dabbed A’ Level, and replacing it with a Uganda Vocational/Technical Certificate of Education.  It was found also that other than the faculty of Science and Information Technology (IT), the other faculties, their studies are theoretical. Following this, the study recommends that every student from the rest of the faculties identifies with at least one of the pitched projects of a student from the faculty of Science and IT, and together, the group, work to ensure that their project is replicated into the community/commercialized for gainful self-employment. This will serve as the major ingredient for AWU to develop a model of enhancing its graduates’ transition to gainful self-employment.  The further main studies will look at each of the objectives, highlighted in the first sentence, through MacIsaac’s (1995) cyclic investigations of plan, act, observe, and reflect of action research.