During the 1980's, college-educated unemployment has become a major challenge to Nigerian educational and economic planners, college graduates, and the Nigerian public.
Nigerian public officials and many Nigerians, however, have attributed this growing incidence of college-graduate unemployment in the country to the oil glut of the late 1970's and 1980's, given that Nigeria's development funds have accrued mainly from oil sales. They believe, therefore, that reductions in oil revenues have depressed economic activities in the country, and consequently, college-graduate unemployment has ensued. Thus, not only is college-educated unemployment seen as a recent phenomenon in Nigeria, it is also believed to be a temporary one.
This study, therefore, was an attempt to describe and to explain the growing problem of college-graduate unemployment facing the Nigerian public during the 1980's.
The study employed a Trend-Analysis procedure, and covered the period 1960-85. In the research design, the 25-year period covered in the study was divided into subperiods that coincided with Nigeria's National Development Plans 1962-68 to 1981-85.
During each period, the number of college graduates available in Nigeria was compared with the number of senior-level positions filled in the country, disregarding the job vacancies often published by the National Manpower Board.
This method of analysis accomplished three tasks: (1) It revealed educational and economic trends, and offered possible explanations for the problem under study; (2) It showed when college-educated unemployment emerged in Nigeria, as well as its trends; (3) It provided some indication of the magnitude of graduate unemployment in Nigeria, currently estimated at over 30 percent.
The study showed that college-educated unemployment was not a recent problem of the late 1970's and 1980's, but has rather become endemic in Nigeria since the early 1970's. Contributing to college-graduate unemployment problems in Nigeria were: the rapid expansion of the university system, the increasing numbers of college graduates, the slow growth of senior-level job opportunities, general economic declines, and the increased costs of creating new jobs in the modern-sector. Nigeria's policies on expatriate labor were also a contributing factor to the problem of college-graduate unemployment.
