Higher Education in the 21st Century: Relevance, Sufficiency, Challenges and Remedies from Graduates’ Perspective

Abstract

Changes in life are ever bound to take place and as a result, what was important yesterday may be obsolete tomorrow, and education is not an exception. Prior to the 21st century, necessity of changes in education had been identified by many researchers and international organizations concerned with education. This had been brought about by the fact that things were changing and education had to keep the pace. In light to this fact, this study was carried out in Eldoret town, Kenya, in order to investigate whether education was up-to-date in the 21st century. It targeted university and college graduates. It was guided by four objectives namely: the relevance of education in this century, the sufficiency, the challenges facing the education in the century and the solutions to the challenges. 300 graduates from 28 different higher learning institutions were considered and data collected using questionnaires. Purposive sampling method was employed. Data analysis was performed in R software and Microsoft Excel for both descriptive and inferential statistics. The results show that, the rate of unemployment among graduates in Eldoret stands at 56.3% (p=0.0163) and 83.4% (p<0.0001) of these unemployed graduates are seeking employment. Among the employed, 59.5% (p=0.0180) are in non-self-employment. At higher learning institutions, majority (74.3%) of the graduates feel that they only gained knowledge while only 3.7% gained both skills and knowledge. Those who don’t find higher education in the 21st century useful in preparing graduates for 21st century’s life are 93.0% (p<0.0001), which is the same as those who don’t find what they gained from higher education useful in their life. The need for reforms in higher education in 21st century for the sake of meeting modern expectations and realization of developments was supported by 98.7% (p<0.0001). 99.7% (p<0.0001) admitted to have faced challenges when studying, which is the same as those with remedies to the challenges. The conclusions are: the higher education in the 21st is not useful, sufficient and relevant for modern life, it is full of challenges and reforms are necessary to help realize developments and modern expectations, and graduates can be useful in finding solutions to the challenges. Recommendations are: the stakeholders should embrace these findings and make necessary reforms to ensure that higher education in 21st century meets the 21st century’s expectations in transforming the modern society, and more research to be done involving wider scope.

Community of Practice in the Context of the Rapid Transition to Online Learning at a Rural University in South Africa: Successes and Pitfalls

“…Some of the successes experienced by the group were that through community of practice and connectivism, lecturers managed, though not without difficulties, to migrate content online (including by breaking it into manageable sizes), to engage meaningfully with students on the elearning platform, to network with other lecturers, and to increase motivation (to mention but a few). As argued by Mwangi and Ingado (2020), working together promotes engagement and motivation. We started having our own Teams training on how to do voice-overs on PowerPoint slides, creation of websites (this happened with lecturers who were teaching the same module), videoing ourselves, blogs and on how to use discussion forums.…”

Collaborative learning experiences of fourth-year students in a social work module

“…Collaborative learning is one of the primary concepts fuelling innovative learning strategies in higher education for producing an adaptive, responsive, innovative and highly-skilled workforce in a competitive global environment (Colomer, Serra, Cañabate & Bubnys, 2020;Wangi et al, 2018). Mwangi and Ingado (2020) also believe that collaborative learning, alongside reflective practices, improves active learning, engagement and student motivation.…”

“…These technologies support collaborative activity within blended and networked learning environments, offering multiple flexible opportunities for students to learn anywhere and anytime. Reflective and collaborative learning activities do not always substitute for old information and practices, but can enhance and deepen existing practices in the process of generating new knowledge (Mwangi & Ingado, 2020). This is also the first steps towards preparing students for the SOTL in the South 5(2): September 2021 Pretorius & Nel demands of 4IR, where technology is becoming an ever-present reality.…”

“…For example, the COVID-19 pandemic requires that numerous disciplines need to work together to find new and innovative solutions to the challenges thrown up by the pandemic. Scientists, healthcare workers, social workers have needed to find new ways of working using technology and engaging in higherorder thinking and learning skills, in order to survive these turbulent times (WHO, 2019; Mwangi & Ingado, 2020;Toquero, 2020). The problems faced by today's work force are often multifaceted and require group rather than individual solutions.…”