Leadership training for undergrads: A solution delayed

A few weeks back there was a vacancy advertisement for the post of ‘management trainee’ published by a leading foreign bank. They had four vacancies, but received more than 3,000 applications. There were many graduates from Sri Lankan universities among the applicants. 

You may feel that there was a tough battle between applicants to get the job and that it was very difficult for the bank to select four out of 3,000... It was a very challenging task for the bank to fill these four vacancies, but unfortunately not because they had too many eligible applicants to select from. The truth is they have selected only two as suitable for the position and could not find four despite the fact that the bank received a super response for the advertisement. 

When I inquired about the reason behind this, it was revealed that though these candidates had enough paper qualifications, they terribly failed when the bank checked their ability to seek practical solutions to the day-to-day issues that arise in the operation of the business. 

In the light of this, I’m in favour of the concept of leadership training offered to university undergraduates. It has been claimed by the Government that this programme has been launched to increase employability of graduates, thus reducing the high rate of unemployment among State university graduates. The programme is aimed to groom leadership skills in undergraduates, while conceptual skills, strategic management skills, conflict resolution skills and human skills will also be developed. 

If the programme is structured to develop skills specified in the objectives, I would be the biggest fan of this initiative. In my view, lack of skills demanded by the corporate world is the biggest cause for the high percentage of unemployment and underemployment among undergraduates in Sri Lanka.

It is evident that the Sri Lankan university system is not adequately changing its offering to suit the fast-changing demands of the business environment. A paradigm shift of the thinking pattern of students as well as lecturers is required to bring things back on track. In particular, the soft skills development of undergraduates is ignored and unfortunately undergraduates are not interested in taking an initiative on their own.

This has created a huge gap between what is expected and what is on offer, which in turn creates a mismatch between the output of State universities and expectations of the corporate sector. 

Providing a properly designed leadership training programme will shape the thinking process of undergraduates at the point of entering university. They should be mentally prepared to study and absorb more if they are to really reap the maximum use of such programmes.

Even after 60 years post independence, we still evaluate things based on our own political views. It is the duty of everyone to support and help to make this programme better since it has more positives than negatives. It is important for the administrators to take firm decisions to implement such a programme since we are naturally resisting change. 

Finally, it is essential for these students to realise the value of this and get the maximum contribution for their personal development. Otherwise, we will inevitably see graduates from State universities becoming obsolete in an environment where there is a free inflow of graduates from highly-competitive foreign universities.