Abstract:

In the contemporary global massification of education, issues of graduate employment is found to be critical and needs great attention whereby both theoretical and practical lessons that are vital in the labor markets get linked with the local industries. This can be realized via tracer studies that provide valuable information in the efforts to be made by the actors to enhance quality education, appropriate training and plausible employment policies and relevant curricula. Along this line, this study uncovers employability trends of one of the senior university in Ethiopia (Haramaya University) regular undergraduate program within one year after their graduation. The study considered graduates of 2016 to 2019 from 52 programs using census survey telephone interviewing approach. As the result indicated, most graduates studied their preferred field of studies and had experiences of career counseling and job searching techniques before graduation. Moreover, the university has been making good efforts in collaboration with external and internal stakeholders to increase graduates’ employability rate beforehand employing various techniques: career counseling, soft skills training, online job searching techniques, awareness creation on labor markets and organizing job fair events. These efforts have revealed improvement over years though the employability trend exhibited decrement over the past for years. This calls for further investigation on factors related to labor market and social political environment connected to versatile issues that help to measure and reduce the magnitude of the problem.

Keywords:

Employability, regular under-graduate, trend analysis, programs, tracer studies, local industries.