Work & Education in Guinea

So I am sure this is not the last time I will be writing about this. Over my two years here my understanding will deepen and I am sure my opinions will change or at least become more nuanced. With that as a disclaimer…

The education system here is the French system and after 4 years of high school, students enter “Terminale” before sitting for the Baccalaureate exam, which here they just call “Le Bacc”. If a student passes the Bacc (or pays the right person to say that they passed it), then not only can they go to University, but University is free and comes with a living allowance. Here’s the catch- the Bacc places you in a University and concentration based on your competence in certain areas and not on personal choice. If I was in Guinea, I would not have been able to be a finance major. I am sure the Bacc would have picked out the fact that I am much better at the soft sciences than math and put me in English or History, maybe in Sociology or Communications. I think there are a few problems with this system. I have always been taught that it is important to love your work, but if you are put into a major that you hate, you cannot switch and end up qualified only for a line of work which you already know you will not enjoy. That is if you can find a job. Guinean universities, for the most part, prepare you only for jobs in Guinea. They are not truly competitive on an international scale. Forget about them having a career center. And there just aren’t enough jobs in Guinea. Unemployment here is over 50%. Unemployment figures only account for people actively seeking work. During University, students become accustomed to living off of the Government. Do not get me wrong; I do support affordable higher education. A free college education is really the only way that most Guineans can go to college. But then they graduate, and cannot find work, and expect that the government will continue to pay for them. They (and by they I mean mostly young men) do not seek employment. They expect the government to find it for them. Walk around Kindia at any point in the day and you will see groups of men sitting under trees drinking tea. One of the volunteers here has been working on a three-day workshop for youth in how to conduct a job search with a job fair on the final day. I am lucky enough to be able to help out with it and will let you know how it goes. Its absolutely a step in the right direction- participants will create a detailed action plan for their personal job search, but before any real change can be made the education system here needs to become more flexible, allow more room for creativity and choice, needs to teach people to be proactive, and there needs to be enough jobs for the talented students coming out of the Universities to find work.