The Australian | August 2013
Employers are blaming universities for their own shortcomings for not producing work-ready graduates ,according to Open Universities Australia CEO Paul Wappett .
But this “lament” coincides with “an extraordinary decline in the willingness of corporations in particular, but also government and other institutions, to provide their employees with on-the-job training”.
Wappett said that when he’d been recruited by an oil company as a graduate “many moons ago”, he’d been required to complete six weeks of induction training before being allowed anywhere near a desk.
Company-provided orientation and ongoing development have declined since then, he said.
Employers need an understanding that they have a responsibility to get the level of capabilities that they require.
He said it was unrealistic for employers to expect the tertiary education sector to “supply them with people that they don’t need to put any training and development into”.
Wappett said the traditional role of universities had been to teach people “not what to think, but how to think”.
Some of these graduate attributes that are seen as not being present – things like communication, collaboration, teamwork, resourcefulness, resilience, initiative – I’m not sure they were ever really the provenance of universities anyway.
Such skills were traditionally honed at home, school and in the community, he said.
