Focus on our education systems: Another reason why graduates come out half-baked

The problem of graduates’ insufficiency has been a major subject of discussion for many days.  Most critiques have directed blames to lack of practicality of the curriculum, while others are complaining that graduates are not exposed to practicals that can enable them to gain skills and experiences required in the job market. As much as I agree with these arguments, I also add one more argument.

I am just out of campus, and now searching for jobs. As I was busy looking for a job, I met a friend, who introduced me to what they call “freelance writing jobs.” Here, writers create accounts and help international do their research assignments. Some of the companies I have come to know include Essay writers, Asia writers, Academia and Writer bay, among others. When I look at the kind of questions these students are given to research on, I like their structural component and the practicality of the tasks. The best thing I love about it is the strictness about “plagiarism” and grammar. For those who do not understand what “plagiarism” is, it means copying other authors’ creative writings and presenting them as your own work. In developed countries, instructors have softwares that are used to check plagiarism such as copyscape, grammarly and grammarbase. These softwares are also very strict on grammar. They can identify redundant information and unnoticed grammatical errors including copy-pasted works.

The question to ask ourselves here is that what is the importance of these softwares in the Kenyan context? I remember well when I was in campus; there was no big deal with assignments and term papers. Assignments were too many and exhausting. The solution was to visit internet, open common pages like Wikipedia and copy-paste whatever was there about the question. I never took time to read whatever I sent to the lecturer to mark. Due to large numbers of students in public universities (like the one I attended), lecturers would not be in a position to read thorough all papers. This, plus the inability to strictly invigilate exams, led to laziness and lack of creativity on the side of the students (including myself).

Now, what is the solution to this? I think the best thing to do here is to look for ways of enhancing graduates’ creativity. To achieve this, I would propose that all universities come up with plagiarism-checker to discourage students from copy-pasting the works of others and avoid extensive reading. This would make students to read exactly what they want to paraphrase. This is because paraphrasing means extensive reading on the subject matter. Likewise, grammar-checkers would discourage redundancy explanations. The habit of writing “anything” to fill the pages would also cease. Additionally, lecturers should avoid giving assignments with direct questions and answers. Leacturers should use case studies to set questions and instruct students to give answers based on those case studies. To avoid the problem of copying other students’ work, lecturers need to design mechanisms of giving different questions to every student and no two students should do similar questions. This will enhance creativity and a habit of reading. To some extent, graduates will make a step as we are searching for better methods enhancing educational strategies to meet the vision 2030 standards. Though students will turn to seeking services of writers, most of them will change due to costs involved in having their assignments completed.

                                                                             Makworo G. Wycliffe