The newly-appointed Vice-Chancellor of the University of Fiji, Premnarine Misir, says the university’s curriculum has been one of the issues he has tried to address.

“A knowledge-based economy requires a good match of graduates into employment positions and then it is necessary to identify the factors enabling a successful transfer of graduates into employment,” he said.

Mr Misir said the concern is that graduate attributes for employment address a student’s future identity and not his current identity.

“Focus on future identity may be disquieting as a perspective for the purpose of a university,” he said.

“Building an awareness of the current student identity though the student experience becomes critical for the subsequent evolving identity necessary for work readiness.”

Mr Misir said studies on work ready graduates show that internships, work experience programmes are important, but these are merely external factors.

“These are external factors but they do not have any consistent and valid theoretical underpinning.

“Emphasis on these external factors and their impact on employability skills is gradually dissipating the core purpose of university education- learning.

“The learning and employability framework is an attempt to surmount this limitation of a lack of operational clarity.”

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