Professional career guidance is an important element in the standardized education system

Be decisively active and disciplinarily motivated when selecting your University Career course for your own future

By Abraham Mabior Rioc, Juba, South Sudan

Wednesday, September 23, 2020 (PW) — Professional career guidance is an important element in the standardized education system. In most cases, career guidance tends to supportstudents in developing their professional interests and improving their academic abilities. Equally important, it supports and intellectual growth and moral development of the learners. 

At the level of some social scales, it encourages academic strengths and achievements of learners as well as keeping on track the learners who are at risk of poor outcomes to make informed decisions about their career choices and professional pathways.

As the globalized world is moving towards adopting the 21^st-Century’s skills, South Sudan seems to be losing ground on guiding its learners to the right professional futurity and career adaptation. Since unclism, in-lawism, and auntisim(incompatible terms for relatives) have taken collective precedence, most of the learners who have no political back upeither in the government or in private sectors are losing academic and social grounds. This is because of a lack of career guidance among the learners, both at the tertiary and basic levels. 

In this respect, I feel very concerned on the level of educational and skill wastages when graduates in relevant fields are crying of unemployment opportunities, yet with their applicable papers at hands. In this sense, I am advising my followers, colleagues, friends, and relatives who have no aunts and uncles in the political system, to take computer-related and business programs seriously at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. 

In reality, these ideas-igniting programs include computer Information Technology, Computer Sciences, Business Administration, Entrepreneurship and Commerce, Education, and Economics, just to mention a few. To have acquired sound knowledge and practical skills in these fields, you can still maneuver your way out to a successful life gear though without your close relatives. These edifying programs at postgraduate and undergraduate levels are seldom ignored but they are moremarketable than other courses many people prefer to be employable courses.

As you all know that struggle without the support of uncles and aunts in South Sudan is real, you better concentrate on marketable educational programs either with private or public universities. In so doing, you are obliged to appreciate voluntarily in the later years after successful completion and efficacious integration in the competitive labor market. However, studying these courses needs you to emphasize serious academic struggle to get the best skills and knowledge out of it.

Realistically in the main time, just put aside for a while undergraduate and postgraduate programs such as Political Science, Anthropology, Public Administration, Philosophy, mention them. Practically, these courses only make sense to those who people who have uncles, in-laws, aunts, etc, in the government. In order to find yourself in political or economic ladders, these courses need one to have loving uncles and aunts to back you up in order to get a job for survival. With strong and corrupt uncles and in-laws within the political system, you are obliged to come in automatically whether people like it or not. 

On the other hand, the Law program is good, but most of the lawyers have become victims of carrying out their professional obligations diligently. Levelheadedly, some practicing lawyers and court magistrates have become targets due to the deviation of law and order. For instance, such lawyers are targeted in theevent that they tell the truth they die, they can lonely survive if they manipulate the law to suit the interest of those who have economic and political influence. 

Hence, from the legal point of view, the real mission of their career is made to die legally and professionally. This implies that this course is not good for those who have no back up in the government because they will die if they continue to tell the truth. Thus, leaving the huge parental responsibility at stake in order to subsist in this hostile world. 

Conversely, all sciences-related courses like Geology and Mining, Agriculture and Civil Engineering, mechanical and electrical engineering, architecture programs, excerpt Medicine have been politically manipulated. In fact, there are some graduates in these fields who have finished with good grades but are not working up to this point in time. In my view, why should one bother to study a course that will not make you employable in the labor market? Even if one is creative, you cannot be so when you are not employed. 

In a similar vein, Medicine is a nice course that can make you survive in all situations if one is flexible, creative, and innovative. With one working out social flexibility in life, one can survive economically anywhere, and at any time if you have a working brain. But if not, you will die a natural deatheconomically and socially. From the reality-based evaluation, most of the graduates from these courses have switched the job career while others are still loitering in the streets since they graduated. This is already a pathetic situation to which many graduates are forced to live in. 

Suggestively, most of the graduates in Science-related fields should be employed to work in government national projects such as Dar Petroleum, GPOC, Nile Pet, Electricity Corporation, major Roads construction companies operating in Bahr El Ghazal, Bor, and Yambio high ways. In this way, they will be made to expedite their knowledge and skills acquired through formal and informal training programs. Nonetheless, they are politically threatened to remain in tea stalls without any national contributions to the country despite the underrated acquired knowledge and skills through formal learning. 

Notably, some relatives either being a cowboy or women, with or without certificates have exploited these opportunities at the expense of the skilled professionals. Henceforth, quality services are not deliverables at all. They are intentionally brought in the system from nowhere and none has to dare the boss. With such surprising possibilities, you find a master degree holder walking on foot and rarely gets meal a day, yet the illiterate ones are driving luxurious cars and residing in hotels. Hence, it is a proven corruption and nepotism of the highest regards.

On this critical basis, what is wrong if we recruit and employ our graduates with qualifications in civil engineering and architecture, etc to be part of our road constructions? What is wrong why we keep out our locally-trained geologists from the site of oil exploration so that they learn to take over once our foreigners go? Why not recruit, employ, and deploy our qualified teaching force and improve their remuneration to educate our children in a country where literacy rate is at 27%? 

Sympathetically, whenever I think deeply about these misplaced opportunities are existing and nobody is paying attention, I sometimes feel like going to the nearby busy and hang myself there. Why not use our South Sudanese professionals to improve our national economy and education standard? Insofar, I have realized that most of the employable skills that can land one on a job without serious searching are got from Arts-related courses. With South Sudan emerging from zero labor market, chances are high to utilize 21st-century skills for the improvement of the countrywide economy at national and local levels.

In the past few years, my numerous educational trips to Europe and Asian Countries have shown me different things in life in relation to marketable courses. Based on my interactive engagements with my brilliant fellows from around the globe, I am made to believe that computer-related and business programs are the eye-opener for improving the national economy at individual, family, and community levels. In this respect, I believe that business and computer-related courses are advisable for some South Sudanese students who have no back, politically and financially. Just a piece of my advice, and wish you a happy Sunday!

The Author, Abraham Mabior Rioc, is a teacher by profession who holds dual Master’s Degrees in Education from the University of Juba and The University of Hong Kong respectively. He is the author of the forthcoming book entitled: “Scaling Up Education in Emergencies: A Viable Tool for Investing in Human Resource Development and Conflict Mitigation in the Conflict-Prone States. He is electronically reachable at mabiorrioc@gmail.com

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