Data and policy analyst Alfred Appiah has pushed back against suggestions that graduate unemployment in Ghana is largely the result of the courses offered by universities, arguing instead that the country’s economic structure is the real culprit.
His comments come in response to former Education Minister Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum‘s recent criticism of some university programmes, which he described as “degrees to nowhere” because they allegedly do not lead to employment.
But according to Appiah, blaming university courses misses the bigger picture. “You don’t have graduate unemployment because of the courses being offered in universities,” he emphasized.
For him, the direction of Ghana’s economic growth is the real culprit. Ghana’s economic growth is service-centred, an area experts say fails to generate adequate jobs. He explained that while Ghana often celebrates economic growth and announces impressive job creation figures, those headline numbers tell only part of the story.
In his view, economic growth alone is not enough if it fails to transform the labour market by creating productive, well-paying jobs capable of absorbing the country’s growing pool of graduates.
“You have graduate unemployment because the economy continues to shift toward low-value service activities and isn’t creating enough meaningful jobs,” he indicated.
He stressed that the real challenge is not the number of graduates entering the job market but the limited availability of formal-sector jobs that match their skills and qualifications.
“It is easy to celebrate GDP growth and throw around job creation numbers. But those headline figures mean little if the structure of the labour market isn’t changing,” he added.
“If the economy isn’t generating enough productive, formal-sector jobs, graduates will continue to struggle regardless of what they studied,” he said.
Alfred Appiah therefore believes Ghana’s graduate unemployment problem should be viewed primarily as an economic and structural issue rather than an educational one.
“The problem is fundamentally one of economic structure, not simply university curricula,” he concluded.
His intervention adds a new dimension to the ongoing debate over the relevance of university programmes, shifting attention from what students study to whether the economy is creating the kind of jobs graduates need after leaving school.
For many graduates, the question may therefore not be whether they chose the wrong degree, but whether the economy is producing the right opportunities.
