The Ugandan education system, like many others around the world, is inherently flawed. At its core, the problems with Uganda’s education system are systemic, starting from the lowest levels and infecting our children so early that their attitude towards education is coloured with the same flaws.
When we focus on higher education, we see a system that cares more for the in-and-out statistics of enrolment and graduation. Post-graduation statistics are focused on the smallest percentage that makes it to prominent positions. These prominent few become role models to our youth, fueling dreams that now see a path to fulfilment through the seemingly tried and tested route of said role models.
What became of everyone else?
Do universities ever follow up? Are we sure the rise of these prominent few can be accredited to the schools they went to? Or could our children be setting themselves up to be on the wrong side of such statistics?
Yes, the reputation of the schools you attend, particularly for higher education, inevitably influences your prospects. However, it’s crucial to discern the extent to which these positive outcomes are genuinely earned by our universities versus attributed to individual effort and talent.
Early post-graduate challenges
That question seems a lot easier to answer for those with careers in tech. Any recent graduate expects to be ready to get that job, start delivering value to your employer and get that pay-check. Job interviews put such expectations to the test, and none are as daunting and eye-opening as coding interviews.
The reality is that the majority of early university graduates will fail an entry-level coding interview. Those that pass will be tripped up in follow-up interviews that will test popular frameworks, soft skills, version control, work processes, quality control and the kind of general software engineering fundamentals that have become a standard in recent years.
The problem is that such ideas are pioneered in the workplace, popularised on the internet and often have to be adopted by the most innovative companies worldwide before they’re considered convention. It takes years for such disruptive ideas to make it into universities, and by the time they do, there’s likely something new and exciting rising in challenge.
A focus on vital fundamentals
With new popular ideas, technologies and methodologies rising every few years, there’s merit in being cautious with what is introduced into university curriculums. A lot of it is opinionated, and nuanced, best taught contextually. Universities must focus on the kind of timeless fundamentals and concepts that are vital to a lot of the innovation we’ve seen in recent years.
The question then is how well do Ugandan universities do this? In my time, not very well. I wasn’t a good student. I rarely attended lectures, only ever studied a week to exams and exploited group assignments (which I hated). I still managed to scrape by on my modest brilliance and get myself a decent degree. In a nutshell, the course was not challenging. It wasn’t designed to be. The fact that universities are (mostly) in control of their curriculums and how their students are tested and graded makes them susceptible to dishonest agendas motivated by a desire by most lecturers to do as little work as possible, and still draw in new students.
It is because of this, more than anything, that Ugandan universities focus their success statistics on their more prominent alumni.
Adapt to stay relevant
Let’s backtrack for a moment and reexamine the thought that universities must proceed with caution in the current tech landscape. Does this mean that universities should have little to do with getting their students ready for the ever-changing demands of the current job market? Not at all. If the problem is a fast-changing landscape, then universities must be just as adaptive, if not in their curriculum, then in the introduction of adaptive elements committed to staying in tune to industry advances for the purpose of preparing students for the realities of the professional demands of our time.
A popular way to do this is the introduction of short courses outside of the regular curriculum. A course on frontend web development can introduce students to popular frameworks like React and Vue, getting them a lot more ready for employment. These kinds of initiatives are also a great way to help students identify their interests and pick out career specialties. Unfortunately for universities, the prevalence of such courses on the internet (many nearly for free) makes them not financially viable. The best a university can hope to get out of them is great marketing to attract new students. As centers of learning, this should be enough. Sadly, the business element of Ugandan universities is too strong to ignore, but perhaps the marketing benefits could motivate an investment in the right direction.
The lack of career guidance
While offering training on job-relevant skills is a step in the right direction, it doesn’t address the largest gap that Ugandan universities are responsible for: career guidance.
The inadequacy of career support services at Ugandan universities presents the largest challenge in preparing students for the job market. The misconception that second-year internships are enough to meet this need has allowed universities to neglect career guidance. Consequently, many students remain unaware of the existence, or availability, of such services within their university.
The inadequacy of internships
Internships are meant to provide a glimpse of this world, enough to perhaps guide a student to a preferred career path, but they rarely serve this purpose. The internships themselves are so early in the student’s academic career that the students offer little to no value to their employers beyond the most basic tasks. They also run for too short a time for students to learn much.
While internships offer some experience, the majority do not prepare students for professional work. This is mainly a failing on our country’s employers, so focused on exploiting the cheap resource of our youth that they don’t appreciate their role in the already inadequate education of our next generation of professionals.
As a result, graduates are forced to learn in the competitive real world, or blame their limited success at employment on the unfairness of our professional landscape that prioritises connections over qualification.
The certainty of upskilling
In the tech world, realising the gaps in one’s education motivates the passion to invest in upskilling. They can either be self-taught or upskilled with the help of a coding bootcamp. Finding a job despite such ill qualifications is not always fortunate, and leaves many to endure long years in low-paying positions. The luckiest find a mentor, like I did. Most do not and end up abandoning the careers they were trained for in favour of a more predictable path.
Can coding bootcamps fill these gaps?
Absolutely. It starts with being aware of these gaps. Bootcamps are relatively new to the continent, as they are to the rest of the world. They promise a more precise and practical approach to training developers. While an average university degree takes three years to complete, coding bootcamps get you job ready in about four to six months.
Without the privilege of government accreditation, bootcamps channel all their focus on other more practical ways to prove their value to prospective students. One of those ways is to publish statistics on the employment rate of their graduates. An employment rate of over 80% is often good enough to encourage enrolment.
Bootcamps also cultivate stronger partnerships with local and international employers, providing not just a direct link to prestigious employers but also insight into exactly what these employers are looking for. Some bootcamps offer tuition refund guarantees should they fail to get graduates employed and this often banishes all doubt for serious candidates.
How well coding bootcamps deliver on their promise is a topic for another time. I’ve interviewed candidates that attended some of the coding bootcamps in Uganda, and I noticed a worrying trend, one that’s frankly predictable in the African context, especially whenever we try to emulate the systems of the developed world. Uganda’s coding bootcamps are currently doing a decent job of preparing their graduates for the job market, but only as far as arming them with surface knowledge of what they should know to get a foothold in the tech world. Sadly, the challenge of properly training them is still largely on the employer.
At Four Lanes, we’re determined to break this decades old trend of churning out hustlers and test takers. Our students deserve to go out into the world confident in their ability to deliver true value to their employers, unburdened by imposter syndrome. It’s a challenge we welcome.
Final thoughts
Regardless of what they promise, coding bootcamps cannot fully replace universities. They serve to not only exploit but also expose the glaring gaps in our education system. Like many of the alternative education models that have come up in recent years, they challenge the norm and force us to examine the relevance and effectiveness of what is. They inspire us to imagine better for future generations. Smart universities are paying attention, and will either assimilate the successful elements of coding bootcamps, or partner with them to plug gaps. The challenge of coding bootcamps and institutions like them is to constantly innovate and ensure they equip their students with the most relevant knowledge and skillsets of our time.
