Graduate unemployment in South Africa:

Prevalence, characteristics and perceived causes

Submitted in partial fulfillment for a Master of Arts,

in Research Psychology by research and coursework degree, at the
University of the Witwatersrand’s School of Human and Community Development.

By Kim Baldry (Student number 583890)

[email protected]
Supervised by Professor Brendon Barnes

March 2013

I
Declaration
This report is being submitted in partial fulfillment for a Master of Arts in Research
Psychology by research and coursework degree at the University of the
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. It has not been submitted before for any degree or
examination to any other University. I declare that the whole work is my own
contribution and I have not plagiarised from any sources. All sources that I have
used are referenced in the text and appear in the reference section of the report.

Kim Baldry
22 March 2013

II
 Contents
List of tables, figures and appendices ii
Acknowledgements iii
Abstract iv
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
1.1 Introduction 1
1.2 Chapter outline 2

Chapter 2: Literature Review 3

2.1 Defining unemployment and education level 3
2.2 Prevalence, characteristics and perceived causes of graduate unemployment 7
2.3 Role of the university in graduate employment 21
2.4 Conceptual framework 26
2.5 Summary of the research gaps 31

Chapter 3: Method 33
3.1 Design 33
3.2 Sample and sampling 34
3.3 The instruments 36
3.4 Variables 36
3.5 Procedure and analysis 43
3.6 Ethics 45

Chapter 4: Results 47
4.1 Survey results 47
4.2 Interview results 65

Chapter 5: Discussion and conclusion 104

5.1 Discussion 104
5.2 Summary 117

References 119
Appendices 129

i
 List of tables, figures and appendices
Table 1: Dependent variables, their description and scale of measure 37
Table 2: Independent demographic variables, their description and scale of measure 38
Table 3: Independent educational variables, their description and scale of measure 40
Table 4: The sample by independent demographic variables 48
Table 5: The sample by independent educational variables 49
Table 6: The employed sample by underemployment prevalence and type 52
Table 7: Significant results of the socio-economic variables presented in descending
order of the unadjusted odds ratios 52
Table 8: Significant results of the demographic variables presented in descending
order of the unadjusted odds ratios 55
Table 9: Significant results of the educational variables presented in descending
order of the unadjusted odds ratios 59

Figure 1: Statistics SA’s categories by which the working population is divided 6

Figure 2: Graduate unemployment conceptual model 29
Figure 3: The sample by employment status 47
Figure 4: Unemployed and looking for work sample by socio-economic status 54
Figure 5: Unemployed and looking for work sample by race 56
Figure 6: Unemployed and looking for work sample by highest qualification level 60
Figure 7: Unemployed and looking for work sample by field of study 61
Figure 8: Unemployed and looking for work sample by job applications per week 64
Figure 9: Unemployed and looking for work sample by duration of work experience 64
Figure 10: Unemployed and looking for work sample by duration of unemployment 64
Figure 11: Jefferson transcription symbols 67
Figure 12: Revised graduate unemployment conceptual model 113

Appendix 1: Current higher education institutions, the merged institutions from

which they were formed and these institutions historical status 129
Appendix 2: Quantitative sampling frame 130
Appendix 3: Survey questionnaire 131
Appendix 4: Email to participants 132
Appendix 5: Interview guide 133
Appendix 6: University clearance letter 135

ii
 Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Magnet Communications for generously giving me access to their
student database. Without them this research would not have been possible. Thank
you to my supervisor, Brendon Barnes, for his guidance and insight. Lastly, thank you
to all the participants who gave of their time to participate in my study.

iii
 Abstract
The prevalence, characteristics and causes of unemployment in the general
population have been well researched in South Africa, however, the sub-population
of unemployed graduates has been studied to a far lesser extent. In this mixed
methods research, 2029 participants from the 23 public higher education institutions
in South Africa were surveyed. The online survey was sent to approximately 20 000
participants via email, with an invitation to participate in the study and information
on the study. The dependent variable was employment status; three categories
described the employed and two categories described the unemployed. Survey
results were analysed using frequency distributions, chi-squared analysis and binary
logistic regression. Thereafter, ten Black, low socio-economic status, unemployed
graduates were interviewed telephonically. The interview transcripts were analysed
thematically looking for both variation and consistency. The results showed that
unemployment in the sample was 5.1%. Black graduates, graduates of low socio-
economic status and graduates with difficulty accessing resources showed the
highest prevalence of unemployment. Having received career guidance was not
associated with employment status. The perceived causes of unemployment were
lack of resources available to look for a job, the lack of connections to the labour
market and discriminatory recruitment practices.

Keywords: graduate, unemployment, career services, graduate recruitment,

community psychology, mixed methods.

iv
 Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Introduction
Unemployment is probably the single most pressing challenge facing South Africa
today (Levinsohn, 2007) and given the considerable resources invested in education
by both public and private individuals, the focus on graduate unemployment is
essential (Moleke, 2003). Education has always been evaluated in terms of its
practical value (Gbadamosi & de Jager, 2009) and has long been recognised as the
means to achieve change, create new ideas, and initiate new practices that move a
country towards increasing prosperity (Wheatley, 2001). Lam, Leibbrand, and
Mlatsheni (2008) indicated that tertiary education is increasingly important in
facilitating a move into employment, resulting in increasing prosperity.
According to government national statistics provided by Statistics South
Africa (StatsSA), the unemployment of those with a tertiary education has increased
from 4.4% in 2008 to 6.3% in 2011, an increase of 1.9%. During the same period the
unemployment rate of those with Matric increased by 1.2% and decreased by 3.3%
among those with education lower than Matric (StatsSA, 2012), therefore
unemployment among those with a tertiary education grew quicker than those with
Matric, or lower than Matric education. These statistics must be seen in context of
their narrow and therefore limiting definition of unemployment that may result in an
underestimation of unemployment figures (discussed in the literature review).
While graduate unemployment is relatively small when compared to unemployment
in the general population, which was 23.9% at the end of 2011 (StatsSA, 2012), it
appears that unemployment amongst those with tertiary education is growing faster
than among those with less education.
The perceived causes of graduate unemployment is worth studying as in
addition to the high unemployment rate, South Africa’s spending on education is one
of the highest in the world and in direct contrast, its university graduation rate of
15% is one of the lowest in the world (Cosser & Letseka, 2010). While this must be
viewed in light of the impact of apartheid and the increasing number of university
enrollments, it nonetheless raises serious questions about the role of skills and

1
education in the economy (e.g. Altman, 2003; Kingdom & Knight, 2005; Letseka &
Maile, 2008; Pauw, Oosthuizen & van der Westhuizen, 2008).
Against this backdrop, the aim of this research was to expand our understanding of
graduate unemployment in South Africa. The specific objectives were to;
- Measure the prevalence of graduate unemployment using a database of
students who graduated from all 23 public higher education institutions.
- Identify demographic and educational factors that may be associated with
graduate unemployment.
- Qualitatively explore unemployed graduates’ perceived reasons for their
unemployment, and to
- Qualitatively explore the role of higher education institutions’ in providing
career services, from the unemployed graduates’ perspective.

1.2 Chapter outline

Chapter 2 reviews literature relevant to the study of graduate unemployment and
summarises the gaps in the current literature. Chapter 3 describes the methods
employed in this research and includes the sub-headings design, sample and
sampling, the instruments, variables, procedure and analysis, and ethics. Thereafter
the results are reported in Chapter 4, with the survey results presented first followed
by the interview results. Lastly, Chapter 5 comprises the discussion, summary and
conclusion respectively. In Chapter 5 key results are discussed, the conceptual
framework presented in Chapter 2 is revisited and implications for theory, methods
and policy are suggested.

2
 Chapter 2: Literature Review

2.1 Defining unemployment and education level

The first step in conducting a study on graduate unemployment should begin with a
definition of these terms. Graduate, in other literature, has been used to describe
people with college education (Cosser, 2003), people who are targeted by
companies in their graduate recruitment programs (Pauw, Bhorat, Goga, Ncube &
van der Westhuizen, 2006), people with higher education (Moleke, 2003) and
broadly students who have graduated (Letseka, Cosser, Breier & Visser, 2010). Most
times the authors do not explicitly define the term ‘graduate’ or where the student
has graduated from and the reader is left to interpret this by the sample used in the
study. In this study a graduate is defined as a person who has studied at, and
graduated with their highest qualification from, a South African public higher
education institution.
In addition to the inconsistent use of the term graduate, education level of
graduates or those with higher education1 is reported by varying and sometimes
overlapping categories. StatsSA has reported education level using the categories
‘diploma/certificate with Grade 12’, ‘degree/higher’ and ‘other’ (e.g. StatsSA, 2008a)
and ‘Matric’ and ‘tertiary’ (e.g. StatsSA, 2012). Researchers use their own terms to
describe education level for example, Moleke (2010) refers to education using the
terms ‘graduates’, Levinsohn (2007) refers to education using the terms ‘some post
matric’ and ‘degree’, and Pauw et al., (2008), use the terms ‘Grade12/Matric’,
‘tertiary diploma/certificate’ and’ tertiary degree’. These education levels are fairly
broad and while they are helpful in understanding broad trends in graduate
unemployment and allowing comparisons of graduates with other education levels
such as Matric/Grade 12 and less than Matric/Grade12, they provide little
opportunity to compare specific groups of graduates with each other. For example:
they do not facilitate the comparison of different levels of study with each other
such as diploma graduates with degree graduates; they do not facilitate the

1
Higher education and tertiary education are used interchangeably and refer to education following
secondary education.

3
comparison of different fields of study with each other such as humanities graduates
with engineering graduates; and they do not facilitate the comparison of higher
education institution2 types with each other such as public and private higher
education institutions3.
To my knowledge, the Human Sciences Research Council report graduate
employment and unemployment in the most detail, often including field of study
and level of study variables. Offset against this strength are other limitations in
using their research to build a picture of graduate unemployment in South Africa.
For example, their study on graduate destinations, (Letseka, Breier and Visser, 2010),
sampled seven public higher education institutions whereas there are 23 public
higher education institutions in South Africa. Additionally, in this study as well as
their previous study reported by Moleke (2005), they do not explicitly define the
term ‘graduate’ and it is unknown whether they are referring to a person’s highest
qualification (as graduates may have more than one qualification either of different
levels and/or different fields of study) or to what level of education they are
referring (for example there is no distinction between a humanities certificate
graduate and a humanities degree graduate).
In addition to the lack of explicit definitions of a graduate and the
inconsistent reporting of their education level discussed above, I now turn to
another reflection of the graduate unemployment research, that being the difficulty
in defining ‘employment status’. Defining and categorising employment status is
difficult mainly due to the large range of employment possibilities that exist. For
example, categorising a person who works only 4 hours per month – are they
unemployed or part-time employed? Or categorising a person who works for
themselves but whose income is inconsistent and sometime equal to zero –
sometimes they are self-employed but what employment category are they when

2
In this report a higher education institution is defined as a public education institution that provides
post-secondary education qualifications at an under-graduate and post-graduate level.
3
Private higher education institutions were not included in this study as the existing dataset used for
sampling did not include graduates from private higher education institutions.

4
they are not earning any money? Or categorising a waitress who is also a student4 -
should this person be categorised as employed or as a student? As indicated above
often people move between possible categories, such as self-employed and
unemployed or they can fall equally into two employment categories at the same
time such as a student and a waitress. These dual categories are not included in
employment surveys.
The most widely used definition of employment status in South Africa is that
reported by StatsSA. A brief description of how they define employment is required
as numerous articles referred to in this study have utilised their definitions, and to
expand on difficulties defining individuals’ employment status.
StatsSA defines working age as persons aged 15-64 years old. Employed are
those persons of working age who, during the reference week of the StatsSA survey:
(a) did any work for at least one hour, or (b) had a job or business but were not at
work. Unemployed according to the official definition are people of working age
who (a) were not employed in the reference week of the survey, and (b) actively
looked for work or tried to start a business in the four weeks preceding the survey
interview, and (c) were available to work, or (d) had not actively looked for work in
the past four weeks but had a job or business to start a definite date in the future
and were available. According to the expanded definition, unemployed are those of
working age who (a) were not employed in the reference week, and (b) were
available to work. The second criterion of having actively looked for work is dropped
in the expanded definition. Those who are not employed or unemployed are
classified as not economically active. Those who are not economically active are
further categorised as either not available to work or available to work but have not
taken active steps to look for work and are termed discouraged work-seekers. The
labour force comprises of those who are employed and unemployed. Figure 1
summarises StatsSA categories of employment presented above.

4
In this report a graduate refers to a person who has studied at, and graduated from, a public higher
education institution. A student is a person who is enrolled in a higher education institution but has
not yet graduated.

5
Figure 1: StatsSA categories by which the working population is divided
Working age population 15-64 years

Employed Unemployed Not economically active

- Official definition - Not available to work
- Expanded definition - Discouraged work-seekers
Labour force

Source: StatsSA Labour Force Survey March 2007

However, as mentioned previously, there are problems with the StatsSA definitions.
Firstly, that the expanded (or unofficial) measure of unemployment is a more
accurate picture of the unemployed population than the official measure (e.g.
Kingdom & Knight, 2000a). Secondly, Cosser & Sehlola (2009) note that these
categories are not mutually exclusive. For example, a person could be studying and
looking for work, and by the above definition thereby both not economically active
(not available to work as they are studying) as well as unemployed (as they are
actively looking for work). Thirdly, the StatsSA’s definition of employed is
problematic because it fails to capture underemployment. This is because any
person who has worked for only one hour in the reference week is categorised as
employed, regardless of whether they were available, willing and able to work
additional hours, regardless of whether they were paid and regardless of whether
the work they did was aligned with their qualification/skills level. Therefore, a
graduate who is unemployed but who worked/volunteered for one hour in the
reference week would by the above definition be classified as employed. This raises
the question of whether the definition of employment - a minimum of one hour’s
work in the reference week – does not disguise unemployment (Kingdon & Knight,
2005), and also include many people who are either grossly underemployed
(Bernstein, 2010) or temporarily underemployed while looking for a better job
(Moleke, 2003).
In summary, defining employment is very difficult and most studies utilise
StatsSA statistics as these are “currently by far the reliable source of information”
(Altman, 2003, p.159). A review of graduate employment research in South Africa,
conducted by Koen (2006) noted that a key shortcoming in graduate employment

6
research is the absence of clear definitions of, for example, what an unemployed
graduate is and that no standard definition is available, only the narrow or expanded
definition used in surveys. However, regardless of which definition of
unemployment is utilised, unemployment in South Africa is extremely high by
international standards (Bernstein, 2010).
This study attempted to address some difficulties in defining unemployment
in two of ways. Firstly unemployment was categorized by two groups, namely those
who are ‘unemployed and looking for work’ and those who are ‘unemployed and not
looking for work’. Those who reported to be unemployed and looking for work were
categorized as unemployed regardless of when they last applied for work. Those
who are unemployed and not looking for work were not categorized as unemployed
as they were understood as not wanting to work currently. Therefore the StatsSA
category of ‘discouraged work seekers’ are included in the unemployed sample
regardless of whether they are actively looking for work or not but rather based on
whether they have said that they are looking for work. Secondly, the employment
category was extended to include underemployment, as all employed participants
were asked whether they consider themselves to be underemployed.
The following sections look at the prevalence, characteristics and perceived
causes of graduate unemployment. The review presented should be understood
bearing in mind the prior discussion around lack of explicit definitions of terms and
the difficulty in defining employment status.

2.2 Prevalence, characteristics and perceived causes of graduate unemployment

2.2.1 Prevalence and characteristics of graduate unemployment

The unemployment rate, calculated as the proportion of the labour force that is
unemployed, is currently 25.5% (StatsSA, 2013), among the highest in the world
(Bernstein, 2010). A longitudinal perspective on the prevalence and growth rate of
graduate unemployment in South Africa is hard to establish given that StatsSA
reports education level by differing categories and that their year on year reporting
is inconsistent.

7
In spite of this there is evidence to suggest that the graduate unemployment rate is
increasing. In a review on graduate employment research Koen (2006) reported
that, using data from StatsSA, tertiary education unemployment rose from 6 to 12%
nationally from 1995 to 1999. Looking at StatsSA’s own publications, the percentage
of the unemployed population with a diploma/certificate/degree/higher grew from a
3.5% market share of national unemployment in 2005 to 3.8% in 2007 (StatsSA,
2008b; StatsSA, 2008c). From October-December 2008 to the same period in 2009,
unemployment of those with tertiary education grew from 4.4% to 5.4% (or by 31%).
During this same period, the economically not active population with a tertiary
education grew from 2.2% to 2.6% (or by 24.7%) (StatsSA, 2010). Using an
independent database, Moleke (2005) reported that 6% of graduates were
unemployed one year after obtaining their qualification. In 2010, using a similar
methodology, she reported that 7.4% of graduates were unemployed. The data sets
on which these two results are reported were collected for the period 1990-1998
and 2002 respectively. Taken together these statistics provide evidence that
unemployment among those with a tertiary education is growing, but there is little
information regarding which graduates this growth can be attributed to and why this
growth is occurring.
In addition to the high unemployment rate, unemployment in South Africa is
disproportionately distributed in the population, most noticeably by age, race and
historically by gender. Approximately a third of the population aged 15-24 years are
not employed and not in education or training (StatsSA, 2013). The youth, namely
people aged 15-34 years make up 74% of the total unemployed population (StatsSA,
2008a) and the number of unemployed youth is growing much faster than any other
group (Altman, 2003). These figures indicate that unemployment is higher among
the younger population.
Unemployment by the official definition is 29.1% for the Black/African5
population, 24.5% for the Coloured population, 11.7% for the Indian/Asian
population and lowest for the White population at 5.9% (StatsSA, 2013). Therefore,

5
In South Africa race is often reported using the categories: African/Black, Coloured, Indian/Asian and
White. They are used to denote historically disadvantaged and advantaged groups.

8
in terms of race, the Black/African population shoulder the majority of the
unemployment in South Africa.
StatsSA does not report the prevalence of graduate unemployment
disaggregated by education level but they do report that those with tertiary
education currently make up 5.9% of the unemployed population. This is up from
4.9% in 2008 (StatsSA, 2013). Therefore, unemployment among graduates is far
lower than unemployment in the general population. Using an independent
database of 2672 university graduates, Moleke (2005) found that 6% of graduates
were unemployed a year after obtaining their qualifications and that race, gender
and institution attended had a significant impact on graduates’ employment
prospects with African and Coloured graduates, females and graduates from
historically Black universities (discussed in more detail later on) most likely to be
unemployed. Unfortunately, Moleke’s study did not provide a definition of the term
‘graduate’ and it was conducted between 1990 and 1998, which is prior to the
restructuring of the South African Higher Education system which occurred from
2003-2005 (discussed in more detail later on). It therefore does not represent the
current unemployed graduate population in South Africa. A more recent study on a
sample of 101 Durban University of Technology graduates found that 36.2% of their
sample of 2006 graduates were unemployed close to a year after graduation (van
der Merwe, 2009). This indicates that the prevalence of graduate unemployment
reported ranges from around 6% to over 30% and that further studies that reporte
the prevalence of graduate unemployment are needed in order to clarify thise large
discrepancy. Van der Merwe’s study was only conducted at one of the 23 public
higher education institutions, and on a relatively small sample, thereby inhibiting the
generalization of these findings to other graduate samples. Furthermore van der
Merwe does not suggest why the prevalence of unemployment she found was so
high. Based on other literature (e.g. Moleke, 2005, 2010; Pauw et al., 2006; Pauw et
al., 2008) it is likely to relate to the reputation of the higher education institution
among graduate employers, the demographic profile of their graduates and/or the
type and perceived quality of the graduate’s qualification.

9
 More conservative figures of graduate unemployment have been reported by
Kingdon and Knight (2005). They reported the prevalence of unemployment among
those with higher education as 13% in 2003, up from 6% in 1995. However, they
also reported that in 1995, 25.6% of people with a higher education had been
unemployed for longer than three years and this increased to 36.1% in 2003. This
percentage increase of people who have been unemployed for longer than three
years was the highest of all education levels, identifying graduate unemployment as
a growing concern. Their study utilised StatsSA data collected in 1995 and 2003, and
as they were primarily interested in guises of unemployment they included
discouraged job seekers in their analysis of unemployment. This may explain why
their reported statistics are relatively high. When describing the unemployed
population they indicate that in South Africa the non-searching unemployed are on
average significantly poorer than the searching unemployed and therefore suggest
that job search is hampered by poverty and the cost of job-search particularly from
remote rural areas. In this regard they conclude that the lack of a job search is due
to discouragement and constraints such as poverty rather than weaker attachments
to the labour market as is proposed by other researchers (e.g. Schoer, Rankin &
Roberts, 2012). Although this data was collected on graduates prior to the
restructuring of higher education in South Africa, which took place between 2003
and 2005, and is therefore not reflective of the current higher education
environment, it highlights poverty as influential factor associated with
unemployment.
Continuing with reports of the prevalence of graduate unemployment,
Bhorat (2004) and Pauw et al. (2006) state that the growing joblessness among
people with a university degree has become a disturbing trend in the post-apartheid
South African labour market, whilst Levinsohn (2007) reports that unemployment is
close to zero for those who have completed a university degree, implying that it is
not a concern. Levinsohn reported unemployment among those with a degree as
4.46% among men and 5.27% among women. The University of Johannesburg found
that 14% of their graduates sampled stated that they were not going to work or
study in the year following their graduation in 2010 (Adams, 2011).

10
 Taken together, we see that the prevalence of graduate unemployment is
contested. Additionally, given general changes in South Africa after the end of the
apartheid government in 1994, and specifically due to the restructuring of the South
African higher education system around 2005 (both discussed shortly in more detail),
it is difficult to compare results from studies conducted over the last 20 years.
However, despite studies’ discrepancies in defining both graduate and
unemployment, and in light of the changing political and educational context, it is
largely accepted that unemployment amongst those with tertiary education is low
compared with unemployment of the general population, however that it may be on
the rise. This is evidence for further study on the prevalence on graduate
unemployment.
This concludes the literature on the prevalence of graduate unemployment,
and the unequal distribution of unemployment, most noticeably by age and race. I
now look at contextual issues relating to the study of graduate unemployment,
namely apartheid6 and the restructuring of the South African higher education
system that followed the end of apartheid.
During apartheid, South Africa’s higher education system, its nature and
function were prescribed by law and the Extension of University Education Act (Act
45 of 1595) provided for the establishment of separate universities for the various
population groups (Behr, 1984 cited in Raju, 2006). During this time, South Africa
had a total of 36 higher education institutions of which 17 served the White
population, 13 served the African/Black population and two each served the
Coloured and India populations (Bunting, 2004 cited in van Zyl, 2010). Whites were
by far the most advantaged race group, followed by Indians, then Coloureds and
lastly Africans/Blacks. The policies and philosophies of apartheid education existed
essentially to keep the non-White population in low paid, low skill level positions and
“render them economically non-competitive” (Letseka, et al., 2010, p.32). White
and Black schools and universities had the largest disparities in resources, funding,

6
Apartheid was a system of racial segregation enforced in South Africa through legislation from 1948-
1994. Under apartheid the rights of the majority non-White South African’s were curtailed.

11
student-teacher ratios which all adversely affected the quality of education for
Blacks.
Since 1994, when the first democratic elections were held in South Africa, a
new de-racialised, higher education system has emerged. The number of public
higher education institutions was reduced from 36 to 23, mainly through mergers
between the formerly Black and White institutions (Pretorius et al., 2006). Following
this restructuring, South Africa has one public higher education system consisting of
three kinds of institutions namely; universities, comprehensive universities and
universities of technology. The 11 universities offer degree type programs only, six
universities of technology offer diploma type qualifications only and the six
comprehensive universities offer degree and diploma type programs (Bunting, 2007
cited in van Zyl, 2010).
In the new system, all institutions are open to all race groups, however,
Letseka, et al., (2010) noted that most historically Black institutions have remained
largely Black while the racial profiles of most historically White institutions has
changed considerably. In addition to the public higher education institutions
approximately 100 private higher education institutions exist and unlike their public
counterparts, they get no funding from the government (Pretorius et al., 2006).
Appendix 1 shows a list of the current public higher education institutions with their
type, the merged institutions from which they were formed and these institutions
historically Black or White status.
In 2011, three public universities were placed under administration by the
Department of Higher Education and Training, all necessitated by mismanagement.
These were the Walter Sisulu University, the University of Zululand and Tswane
University of Technology. Also, the merger between the University of the North and
the Medical University of South Africa that created the University of Limpopo was
undone (Snyman, 2011). These changes allude to differing quality of services among
South Africa’s higher education institutions, which is likely to affect graduates ability
to secure employment, both in terms of the quality of their education and the
perception of the institution among graduate recruiters.

12
 This concludes my summary of the current context of higher education in
South Africa. The following section looks at factors associated with the perceived
causes of graduate unemployment.

2.2.2 Perceived causes7 of graduate unemployment

In current graduate unemployment literature, causes of unemployment relate to
attributes of the graduates themselves or individual factors, those that can be
attributed to graduate employers or recruitment factors and to those that relate to
the country’s overall economy and growing labour force. Proposed causes of youth
unemployment in general, not graduate unemployment specifically, include a lack of
skills among the youth, lack of capital constraining entrepreneurship, the growing
size of the youth labour force and high youth wages. In addition to these causes of
youth unemployment, causes of graduate unemployment have included a skills
mismatch between labour demand and tertiary education institutions’ supply, the
poor quality of education particularly at historically Black institutions, and
discrimination in hiring practices whereby graduate recruiters chose to recruit
graduates from particular higher education institutions and chose not to hire
graduates from other institutions. Few published research reports look at the impact
of higher education institutions’ career services, a non-academic support service,
related to graduate unemployment. Often research that looks at the role of the
higher education institutions’ and their graduate’s employability, looks at the quality
of the education offered and the reputation of the institution.
First I review perceived causes of graduate unemployment relating to factors
of the individual, which include their demographic and educational factors.
Thereafter I look at the perceived causes of graduate unemployment relating to
factors within the graduates context such as the role of graduate employers and of
the higher education institution. For clarity, the individual’s education is considered

7
Perceived causes refers to reports of causes in the literature, however, in almost all of the reports
causality has not been proven. For example, in his review on the graduate unemployment research in
South Africa, Koen (2006) reports that most graduate studies present descriptive variables in relation
to the “causal chain examined” (p.14) although the studies to which he is referring did not test
causality.

13
an individual factor whereas the services that the higher education institution
supplies is considered a factor of the higher education institution.
Using data from the StatsSA 2005 Labour Force Survey, Levinsohn (2007)
reported that unemployment amongst those with a degree is higher for women than
for men. Similarly Cosser (2003), found a bias towards employment of males over
females with 30% of males survey employed and only 21% of females. These
findings indicate that in terms of gender, males have been shown to have greater
employment prospects and lower unemployment than females. Mlatsheni and
Rospabe (2002) found that Black and female youths have less access to the labour
market than White and male youths and that the major factors explaining these
were the employment enhancing features of Whites such as higher levels of
education, their better family background and the location in areas of low
unemployment. They also reported that youths in rural areas not only compete
against increasing number of youths for jobs but also against the increasing number
of older age cohorts. Therefore in addition to gender, race is also an important
determinant of employment status.
Moleke (2010) found that those who graduated from historically Black
institutions were absorbed into the labour market more slowly after they obtained
their degree than those from historically White institutions and African and Coloured
graduates had lower prospects for employment than their White and Indian
counterparts. This indicates that race is also associated with individual’s higher
education institution. Moleke (2010) also reported that the most objective
determinant of finding employment amongst graduates is field of study, with social
science and applied humanities graduates having the highest proportions of
unemployment and business/commerce graduates the second highest. Graduates
who hold qualifications with a professional focus tended to have more positive
labour market prospects than those with qualifications of a general nature. Pauw, et
al. (2008) found that in terms of qualification type, the rapid increase in
unemployment of those with diplomas or certificates rose from 7.9% to 13.2%
between 1995 and 2005 and much of the growth in graduate unemployment can be
attributed to the sharp rise in unemployment among these qualification types.

14
Unfortunately Moleke (2010) does not list which courses she classifies as having a
general or professional focus. Similarly Pauw et al. do not stipulate which specific
diploma and certificate courses they are referring to and from which higher
education institutions they were obtained. Furthermore these authors do not
attempt to explain their quantitative findings but tend to report the statistics at a
descriptive level. It would be worthwhile to address, for example, why students
from historically Black institutions, those who have studied certificates or diplomas,
and those who have studied with general areas of focus have higher likelihood of
being unemployed? Nevertheless, these studies indicate that in addition to race and
gender, higher education institution attended, field of study and level of study are
important contributors to our understanding of graduate unemployment.
These educational variables are in turn associated with other factors, for
example, field of study is associated with parents’ education as parents serve as both
a guide and a role model to their children. For example, it is not uncommon for a
lawyer’s child to also study law, as parents and extended family can influence
learners’8 higher education choices. This is important as apartheid prevented many
Blacks from studying courses with a professional focus and therefore Black students
may be more likely to enroll in courses of a more general nature. Indeed it is not
surprising that Moleke (2010) found that most Black students graduate in fields of
study without a professional focus and that these fields yield the highest prevalence
of graduate unemployment. Parents and family members not only influence career
choice when entering higher education but also after graduation. For example,
Watts and Fretwell (2004) report that in developing countries like South Africa, when
older children leave higher education they are expected to contribute to the costs of
sending younger siblings to school. Older children may not be encouraged to enter
post-graduate studies as it is more beneficial to the whole family if they earn an
income sooner rather than later. Therefore poorer families are more likely to
produce certificate and diploma graduates, as these are relatively shorter

8
‘Learner’ is used to refer to a person in secondary education whereas ‘student’ refers to a person in
higher education

15
qualifications, and these levels of study were reported by Pauw, et al. (2008) to drive
the increasing graduate unemployment rate.
In a study on national unemployment, Mlatsheni and Rospabe (2002) found
that having an employed family member increased the likelihood of young
household member employment and conversely having unemployed family
members decreased the probability of young household member employment. In
relating the role of education to their results they reported that their findings
indicate a “vicious circle where income disparities lead to educational attainment
disparities, which in turn perpetuate existing income inequality” (Mlatsheni &
Rospabe, 2002, p19). Additionally, when reviewing seven developing countries
career development policies and practices, Watts and Fretwell (2004) reported that
poor people may be drawn to accept any job in order to provide a source of income.
In such instances poverty suppresses the concept of choice and leads career
guidance (offered by higher education institutions) relevant only for those who are
perceived to have choices. Kingdon and Knight (2005) found that, in South Africa,
the unemployed who are not looking for work are significantly more deprived than
those who are actively looking. They suggest that people’s job search is hampered
by poverty, by the cost of a job search specifically for people from remote rural
areas, and by high local unemployment. Lack of capital also appears to be the
primary constraint to entrepreneurship among the youth (Mlatsheni & Rospabe,
2002). These findings relate socio-economic status to one’s ability to look for work,
ability to apply for jobs and relative choice concerning employment options. Socio
economic status in turn is related to household factors such as parents and siblings
education and employment.
Relating to general literature on poverty amongst students, Dominguez-
Whitehead (in press) reported that poverty results in food insecurity among students
and that student loans often do not cover the cost of basic needs such as food,
clothes and shelter. Morrison, Brand and Cilliers (2006) found that, in South Africa,
Black students face high stress levels in adapting to tertiary education and that these
students report financial difficulties as a prominent source of distress. This

16
reiterates the influence of poverty on students’ experiences. I now look at the
influence of finances when entering higher education.
The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) provides aid to financially
needy students. This is at the core of South Africa’s strategy to address inequality
enforced during apartheid by increasing access to higher education for previously
disadvantaged groups. In 2009, 93% of NSFAS loans were given to Blacks, 5% to
Coloureds, 2% to Whites and 1% to Indians (National Student Financial Aid Scheme,
2013, January 7) providing evidence that financial constraints when accessing higher
education is related to race, with Black learners using the bulk of the financial loans.
In addition to inhibiting access to higher education, financial constraints also play a
significant role in the high drop-out rate of South Africa students (MacGregor, 2007).
A study on the expectations and subsequent experiences of students found that the
largest gaps between the perceived importance and the perceived experience of a
university service related to the scholarships available and fees (Gbadamosi & de
Jager, 2009). The results revealed that the students’ perceived experience is
significantly lower than their considered importance of these services indicating that
finances are a concern for some students. These studies provide evidence of the
pervasive nature of lack of finances on learners’ and students’ experiences across a
range of activities.
Taken together, poverty is an important area for further study. Relating to
graduate unemployment, how poor graduates experience the job search process,
the cost of looking for a job, and the role of other household members warrants
further study. This will lead to a more holistic understanding of the influence of
poverty on graduates’ job search and resulting employment choices and prospects.
Another individual factors relating to employment is the process by which a
graduate looks for and secures employment. Schoer, et al., (2012) point out that, in
South Africa, gaining employment is a function not only of ones skills and personal
characteristics but also the process through which employers and job seekers are
matched. They investigated which company, household and individual
characteristics are associated with the channels through which young South Africans
find their first job. They identify three types of recruitment channels; direct channels

17
which involves the job seeker going form door to door of potential employers,
through social networks, namely family and friends, and through formal channels,
namely adverts. They found that the majority of employees had been recruited
through social networks and those who were recruited through social networks
reported higher number of employed household members, illustrating the
importance of household attachment to the labor market. They note that employers
hire people through networks for a number of reasons. According to Rankin,
(personal communication, 25 January 2013), three of the most important reasons
are firstly, it improves information that the employer has about the people - if you
hire someone's brother it is likely that they will have a similar productivity level,
temperament as so on, compared to some other person. Secondly, it cuts down on
the costs in the screening of applicants. Thirdly, employers may recruit through
networks for the monitoring function; if an employee brought someone to work at a
company then they might make sure that the new recruit works hard in order to
avoid a bad reflection on themselves. Schoer et al., (2012) reported that those
employed through direct channels did not differ by education level compared with
those who have never been employed. These studies raise household attachment to
the labour force and individual job search strategies as important in the study of
graduate unemployment.
Together these research findings provide evidence that family member’s
education, their employment status, and their socio-economic status influence
leaners’ access to higher education, students’ experiences at their higher education
institution and graduates access to the labour market and to resources required to
look for work.
Having reviewed individual demographic and educational factors relating to
graduate unemployment, I now look at factors relating to those who employ
graduates, namely graduate employers and their graduate recruitment practices.
Pauw et al. (2006) conducted a study in which they interviewed staff from 20 of
South Africa’s largest firms across a range of sectors, all of which employ graduates,
asking questions around their graduate recruitment activities and practices. The
authors reported that employers considered graduates to lack the required soft skills

18
(e.g. communication ability), work experience and workplace readiness required for
the workplace. Employers also raised graduates’ inability to deal with the interview
process in a mature way and the lack of infrastructure to support graduate
recruitment fairs at certain higher education institutions as reasons why they prefer
to actively recruit graduates from only certain higher education institutions and not
others. The employers were also fairly explicit in saying that these concerns relate
particularly to graduates from historically Black institutions (Pauw et al., 2006; Pauw
et al., 2008). While poor infrastructure at historically Black institutions is expected
given the previous apartheid higher education system, these graduates inability to
deal with interviews in a mature way raises some questions. For example, is
interview training provided at historically Black institutions and if so, is the quality of
this training inferior? And do graduates from historically Black institutions actually
perform poorer in interviews than those from historically White institutions, or is
this just a perception among some employers?
Relating to the quality of education, historically Black institutions received
less funding and resources than their White counterparts, and although this has
been systematically addressed in the past five years, discrepancies between
institutions still exist. This is evident, for example, by the University of
Johannesburg’s 2011-2020 strategic thrusts. The University of Johannesburg,
formed by the merger between two historically White institutions consisting of one
campus each and one historically Black institution consisting of two campuses, has
included as one of their eight strategic thrusts the attainment of equivalence of all
campuses, with dedicated initial focus on the two formerly Black campuses
(University of Johannesburg Strategic Thrusts 2011-2020, 2011). This alludes to
differing resources and in turn quality of education at the various campuses and may
indicate that graduate recruiters are somewhat correct in their perception that
historically Black institutions produce lower quality graduates than their White
counterparts. However, a study on graduate attributes from the employers’
perspective (Griesel & Parker, 2009) reported that the degree to which the
knowledge and skills that higher education sets out to develop is less out of sync
with the needs of the employer than is commonly believed. Unfortunately Griesel

19
and Parker they did not report their results disaggregated by higher education
institution and therefore it is not possible to use their results to either confirm or
dispute the perception that historically Black institutions produce lower quality
graduates in terms of the graduates education and skills.
On the other hand, Moleke (2010) reported that historically Black institutions
provide an oversupply of Black graduates in fields with lower employment prospects
and that most unemployed graduates were African and had qualifications in the
social sciences and applied humanities. These are fields in which the growth in
labour force entrant’s outstripped growth in employment created, resulting in low
absorption rates of these graduates. Therefore is it possible that the growth in
unemployment can be attributed to labour force factors rather than the quality of
education provided at certain institutions being below the level that recruiters
require. After having raised these two points of possible causes of graduate
unemployment, namely the quality of education at historically Black institutions and
the labour force growth, it is important to clarify that these are not under
investigation in this study. This study is interested in gaining the unemployed
graduate’s perspective in terms of the role of their higher education institution and
their perception of the graduate recruitment practices. Therefore it looks at these
findings from the unemployed graduate’s point of view, not from the recruiter’s
point of view or from an economic perspective.
In concluding this part of the literature review, I concur with Koen (2006) in
that researchers have not yet sufficiently explored links between higher education
and the world of work. We know that the prevalence, characteristics and perceived
causes of graduate unemployment relate to a plethora of interrelated demographic
and educational variables of the individual, as well as to factors relating to higher
education institutions and to those relating to graduate employers. However, we
know relatively little about the relationship between these variables and the actual
experiences of graduates when looking for work and negotiating employment.
In summary I identified these key areas for further study: what is the
prevalence of graduate unemployment following the end of apartheid and the
restructuring of the higher education system; what are the characteristics of the

20
unemployed graduates; what is the role of poverty on graduates job search process;
and what is the role of the higher education institutions in providing career services?
I now look at literature specifically relating to the role of higher education
institutions in providing career services to their students and graduates.

2.3 Role of the university in graduate employment

Unemployed graduates are a unique subsection of the unemployed youth
population because they have studied at a higher education institution and
graduated therefrom. Therefore, when studying graduate unemployment it is
important to do so in the context of higher education institutions’ role in providing
career services to both their students and graduates alike.
Cliff (2003) stated that although many students arrive at higher education
institutions underprepared for the challenges they will face, institutions have a
moral responsibility to assist students they accept towards ultimate academic
success. Here academic success refers to graduating but I pose the question, should
ultimate success not refer to the employment of the graduate in a position and area
that he/she can contribute to the overall prosperity and success of the country’s
economy?
As a result of only few studies being conducted on graduate samples,
relatively little is known about higher education institutions’ role is assisting
graduates secure employment. Kay and Fretwell (2003) noted that the then 31
registered tertiary institutions in South Africa all had student counseling units in
place and that these units typically offered career information, guidance and
counseling services. More recently in 2010, Cilliers, Pretorius and van der
Westhuizen (2010) conducted a national benchmarking survey of student counseling
centres in South Africa and reported that the second most frequent problem
students faced were career development issues. Therefore career services are
offered by higher education institution’s student counselling centres.
When comparing the constituency of the South African student counselling
centres as indicated in Cilliers et al.’s (2010) report, to that of Gallagher’s (2006)
report, I see that that in South Africa student counseling services and student career
services are usually grouped together in a single unit (with the exception of
21
University of Cape Town and Rhodes University). In America, however, counseling
centres are separate to career centres as their scope of practice is seen as
fundamentally different.
South African counselling centres, also known as Counselling and Career
Development Units or Centres for Psychological Services and Career Development,
typically hire psychologists and counsellors and they provide services based on the
assumptions of therapy, most obviously that the psychologist is an agent of change
in the students’ development. Therefore, there is an assumption that career
services can be delivered by counselors and psychologists. In reviewing career
development services in seven developing countries including South Africa, Watts
and Fretwell (2004) report that the delivery of career guidance is most often a labour
intensive one-to-one service delivered by psychologists and that there is excessive
emphasis on psychometric testing.
Based on a review of all of the South African public higher education
institutions’ websites and that reported by Cilliers et al. (2010), the current career
services that higher education institutions offer are; (1) CV writing workshops, (2)
mock interviews, and (3) job finding skills. In addition to this, some institutions also
offer (4) career resource centres and (5) graduate recruitment fairs. Very few higher
education institutions offer online career services. The first three services
mentioned, namely CV writing workshops, mock interviews and job finding skills are
based on the premise that given the required skills and training, graduates can
effectively manage their careers. The skills they make reference to are ability to
write a CV, the ability to perform in an interview and the ability to look for work.
Interestingly, these first three services mentioned all relate to resources of the
individual and fail to acknowledge structural factors within the environment that
may affect employment prospects. This focus on the individual is not only evident in
the career services discussed above but also in career guidance literature (e.g. Watts
& Fretwell, 2004).
To date, the most comprehensive review of career guidance policies and
provision, across seven developing countries including South Africa, was that
conducted by Watts and Fretwell (2004). In their report they state that career

22
guidance can perform a valuable role in raising the aspirations of individuals in
poverty by making them aware of opportunities and supporting them in securing
such opportunities. Watts and Fretwell go on the say that career guidance
emphasises the ‘active individual’ and their ability to make decisions about their own
lives. Furthermore they define career guidance services as those intended to assist
individuals make occupational and educational choices and manage their career. It is
clear from their review that to date, at least in developing countries, career
development is approached from an individual perspective and I question the extent
to which this approach is applicable given the role of household variables, higher
education institutions’ role and graduate recruiters’ role, discussed in the literature
review.
This observation aligns with one of the major limitations of mainstream
approaches to psychology; that is the explicit and implicit assumption that the
individual should be the focal point of change (Ahmed & Pretorius-Herbert, 2001).
However, community psychology attempts to address this limitation by shifting
focus from the individual to social structures and may therefore provide a
framework for addressing graduate unemployment including, for example, factors
relating to higher education institutions and to graduate employers, thereby shifting
focus from the graduate themselves. Community psychology models challenge the
mainstream psychological view that the individual is entirely responsible for their
own fate, and therefore may provide a framework for understanding graduate
unemployment with the appreciation of individual variables (such as educational
level), family variables (such as socio-economic status), in the context of higher
education (the various institutions’ services and reputations) and in the context of
graduate employment practices (such as recruiters only visiting historically White
institutions for graduate employment fairs). A shift to a community psychology
perspective could be a significant development in the study of graduate
unemployment.
Based on these first three services it appears that higher education
institutions believe that graduates will have the resources required to look for and
apply for work, and that if the higher education institution ensures that graduates

23
have a CV and are prepared for an interview that the graduates will be able to apply
for work and attend interviews themselves. In other words, there is an assumption
that graduates have the all the resources required to look for work and that the job
search process is the graduate’s choice. However, it is likely that the resources
required to actually look for work, namely access to job adverts usually via the
internet or newspaper, money for printing and posting application documents, and
transport to visit companies either to apply or to attend an interview are not
available to many unemployed graduates suggesting an error in this assumption.
The fourth and fifth service offered by some, not all, higher education
institution’s counselling centres, namely career resource centres and graduate
recruitment fairs, acknowledge the student within their context by providing services
relating to resources and assess to graduate employers.
Career resource centers usually consist of a library of information on the
world of work, industry and employer information, and computers that students can
use for career related activities. These career resource centres provide students
with the access to information, computers and to the internet required to conduct a
job search. Taken together, service one through to four provide students with the
tools and resources required to apply for work. They do not however acknowledge
that (1) students still need to travel to the graduate employer’s and (2) that often
jobs are secured through networks (Rankin et al., 2007) and not through online
applications.
The fifth service offered, namely graduate recruitment fairs, addresses
students mobility to see graduate employers and the use of networks to apply for
work to some extent. Graduate recruitment fairs usually entail graduate employers
making onsite visits to higher education institution’s campuses to advertise their
company, their graduate vacancies and to conduct graduate recruitment activities.
These activities include information talks to the students in which the employer
informs students about the company and students are given an opportunity to have
their questions answered. Sometimes the companies also hand out application
forms or explicitly tell the students how to apply for work at their company.
Companies sometimes also hand out information brochures with these details

24
included therein. Therefore the company comes to the student thereby eliminating
the cost of the student visiting the company. It also provides the student with an
opportunity to network with potential employers. However, as discussed previously,
Pauw et al. (2006) reported that graduate recruitment fairs are only held at some
higher education institutions as these fairs require specific infrastructure at the
higher education institution, not available at historically Black campuses.
Additionally employers often only attend these fairs at historically White institutions
due to the high cost involved. Therefore while these fairs address contextual factors
relating to graduate unemployment, they are only carried about at selected higher
education institutions.
Together, the five career services commonly offered by higher education
institutions appear to provide all the resources required for a student to become
employed. These are a CV, interview skills, access to information and access to
employers. However, because of the assumption that the individual is responsible
for their fate, there is excessive emphasis on the individual and a failure to address
structural inequality so prevalent in South Africa. These services do not appraise
social reality as a dynamic and context specific. By viewing the individual as
responsible for their own employment prospects there is oversight of factors and
interventions at the community level that could explain why certain groups of
graduates have higher prevalence of unemployment compared to others. For
example, the discriminatory recruitment practices of graduates employers results in
a situation wherein historically Black institutions are disadvantaged as their students
only receive services relating to the individual, namely CV writing, interview skills
and job searching workshop, and not services relating to their context such as the
resources required to look for work, mobility to visit companies and opportunities to
build networks with potential employers. The result thereof has, to my knowledge,
not been investigated and reported in South Africa.
Lastly, and of utmost importance, all career services offered by higher
education institutions are only available to registered students and not to graduates.
Therefore, there is either an assumption that graduates will have access to the
required resources needed to look for work, namely newspapers, a computer, the

25
internet, a printer and transport mobility, when they leave the higher education.
Alternatively higher education institutions may not view themselves as responsible
for providing career services to graduates or for assisting them to gain employment.
Key questions following from the review of career services higher institutions
offer are; (1) can graduates access all of the resources required to find employment
once they have left the university, (2) do higher education institutions view their
career services role as extending to graduates, (3) how do higher education
institutions’ career services measure their effectiveness of their service if not
ultimately by the employment of their graduates and (4) what is missed in our
picture of graduate unemployment by the excessive focus on the individual and a
failure to appreciate the graduate in their context? This research attempts to
address these questions.

2.4 Conceptual framework

To end the literature review I provide a framework from which this research is
approached. This research is not approached from a specific theoretical framework
but rather with the intention to enhance current understanding of graduate
unemployment through the provision of a revised conceptual model. “Conceptual
models differ from theory in that they are not usually concerned with global classes
of behavior but with specific types of behavior in specific contexts” (Earp & Ennett,
1991).
The central point of my model is graduate unemployment in South Africa and
I attempt to both confirm and expand on findings in the current literature.
Confirmation is necessary given that a large body of South African graduate
unemployment research was conducted on samples who graduated either before
the end of apartheid or before the restructuring of higher education system and
therefore do not reflect the current higher education environment in South Africa.
Reported research has also been dominated by quantitative methods and univariate
analysis. This research included both multivariate analysis and qualitative research.
Expansion is necessary as in a paper reviewing the existing graduate employment
research in South Africa, Koen (2006, p.2) wrote that “the central issue that emerges
from the analysis is that studies do not add much value to our knowledge about
26
graduate employment or unemployment patterns because different result sets often
merely confirm each other” and “in some aspect governments, institutions,
professional bodies and academics do not have a strong empirical base for
understanding labour market dynamics or considering educational and employment
strategies” (p.13).
Currently graduate unemployment is understood and researched with
reference to youth unemployment in South Africa. This is expected as most recent
graduates are youths. Interestingly, to date, very little recorded research has looked
at graduate unemployment with regards to the role of higher education institutions,
the very aspect that makes graduates a unique subset of the youth population. This
research has done so. Existing graduate unemployment is also often contextualised
within the history of apartheid in South Africa, which disadvantaged the non-White
population, as well as, in terms of the restructuring of the South African higher
education system during 2003-2005 in which historically White and historically Black
institutions where merged to form a new de-racialised higher education system. The
aim of this restructuring was to address inequalities of the past by providing equal
education and labour market opportunities for all the race groups and genders.
Prevalence, characteristics and causes of graduate unemployment well
reported in the literature relate to factors of the individual, those of graduate
employers and those relating to the labour market. In this research, factors relating
to the labour market are not measured, in order to keep the research focused.
Rather there is an attempt to measure factors relating to the higher education
institution that impact on graduate’s unemployment experiences, as this aspect of
the graduates’ context is often overlooked.
Relating to the individual race, gender, socio-economic status, education, job
search methods and attachment to the labour market are fairly consistently
mentioned. Most commonly Black, female, low socio-economic status graduates
have the highest prevalence of unemployment. Relating to the individuals’
education, usually those with lower levels of education in fields of study without a
professional focus are most commonly unemployed. Regarding individual job
search, most graduates find employment through networks and these networks are

27
related to the number of employed household members as this is an indicator of the
graduates’ attachment to the labour market.
Contextual factors of graduate unemployment related to graduate employers
consist of the employers’ recruitment strategies such as utilizing graduate
recruitment fairs and existing employee networks. Graduate recruitment fairs are a
primary way for graduate employers to recruit graduates and often these fairs are
only carried out at historically White institutions due to the high cost of conducting
on campus recruitment drives and the availably of the infrastructure required at the
various university campuses. Furthermore, employers have reported that the quality
of education attained from historically Black institutions is inferior to that attained
through historically White institutions and therefore they prefer to recruit graduates
from historically White institutions (Pauw et al., 2006). Recruitment research (e.g.
Schoer, et al., 2012) has confirmed that most jobs are secured through networks and
that employers prefer this method of recruitment for a number of reasons,
mentioned earlier.
Lastly, two most commonly reported labour market factors that relate to
graduate unemployment are the skills mismatch between the higher education
supply and the labour market demand, and the increasing graduate labour force
participation out-growing the demand for graduates in the labour market. This
aspect of the conceptual model is presented below as it is prevalent is
unemployment literature, however, it is not addressed in this research. The existing
conceptual framework summarised above, and from which this research is
approached is shown in Figure 2.

28
 Figure 2: Graduate unemployment conceptual model

Factors associated with

graduate unemployment
relating to graduate employers

 Recruitment strategies
Factors associated with graduate (Recruiting through networks Factors associated with graduate
unemployment relating to the and graduate recruitment unemployment relating to the
individual fairs) labour market

 Race  Mismatch between higher

 Gender education supply and labour
 Socio-economic status market demand
 Education  Increasing labour force
 Job search methods participation
 Attachment to the labour
market

Factors associated with graduate Graduate

unemployment relating to higher
unemployment
education institutions

 Provision of career services

(CV writing, interview training,
job finding skills, career resource
centres, and graduate Youth unemployment
recruitment fairs)

2003-2005
1994
Restructuring of
End of apartheid
higher education in
South Africa

In addition to studying the factors outlined in the conceptual model above, I aim to
appreciate the prevalence, characteristics and perceived causes of graduate
unemployment from a community based perspective. That is to understand how
factors of the individual, namely their demographic and educational factors, interact
with factors in their environment, namely their higher education institution and the
graduate recruitment market, to result in a situation wherein graduates find
themselves unemployed. Community psychology, focuses on the relationship or
interaction between the individual and his or her environmental or social context

29
(Seedat, Duncan & Lazarus, 2001) and therefore provides a suitable lens from which
to study graduate unemployment.
This following list of findings from previous research highlight the need for
researchers to challenge the assumption of individual choice in graduate’s career
trajectory (as mentioned by Watts and Fretwell, 2004) and to look at structural
factors associated with graduate unemployment.
- Graduate recruiters are concerned with the quality of graduates from
historically Black institutions and this influences their recruitment practices
(Pauw et al., 2006).
- Higher education institutions provide an oversupply of graduates in fields
with lower employment prospects (Moleke, 2005, 2010).
- Having employed family members increases the likelihood of young
household member employment and conversely having unemployed family
members decreases the probability of young household member
employment (Mlatsheni & Rospabe, 2002).
- The unemployed who are not looking for work are significantly more
deprived than those who are actively looking and people’s job search is
hampered by poverty (Kingdom & Knight, 2000b).
These four findings all relate to factors outside of the graduate’s control, namely
graduate recruitment practices, higher education enrollment, family employment
and poverty, and therefore provide evidence that the study of graduate
unemployment should acknowledge and appreciate the broader socio-political
context in which graduate unemployment exists.
The implications of addressing this research from a community psychology
perspective include: (1) the ability to appreciate the relationship between factors
associated with graduate unemployment, and (2) the ability to move from a
remedial approach to graduate unemployment to a preventative strategy. The
ability to appreciate the relationship between factors associated with graduate
unemployment is important as it shifts the focus of the study from the individual
graduate to the graduate within their context. This explanation of the relationship
between factors is a primary driver of this studies design whereby the interview

30
findings are aimed at explaining the survey results. Furthermore, in studying the
unemployed graduate within their context it is possible to identify preventative
interventions to reduce the prevalence of graduate unemployment rather than
measuring the prevalence of graduate unemployment ex-post facto. Therefore there
is a shift from understanding the unemployed graduate to understanding students
who are vulnerable to unemployment before they are unemployed. This has
significant practical value for both higher education institutions’ career services and
graduate recruitment services as they can modify their practices to assist student
groups who are known to be vulnerable to unemployment before they graduate and
become unemployed graduates.

2.5 Summary of the research gaps

In light of the literature and the conceptual framework, a number of gaps in the
current understanding of graduate unemployment in South Africa become evident;
1) Several studies define ‘high’ or ‘growing’ graduate unemployment as the
main concern, however, only two were published in the previous seven years
(Koen, 2006). Similarly since 2006, few studies have been published on the
prevalence of graduate unemployment and in addition to this paucity of
research on graduate unemployment, published studies most often lack of a
definition of what a ‘graduate’ is. This gap informed the first research
objective, namely to measure the prevalence of graduate unemployment in
South Africa using a large sample who represent all the 23 public higher
education institutions with an explicit definition of the term ‘graduate’.
2) The characteristics of graduates in South Africa have changed dramatically
since the end of apartheid in 1994 and since the restructuring of the higher
education system from 2003-2005. With this the characteristics’ of
unemployed graduates has also changed. Ongoing research, such as the
current study, is required to both track and explain these changes. Therefore
the second objective of the study is to measure the demographic and
educational characteristics of the unemployed graduates sampled.
3) The characteristics of unemployed graduates are predominantly studied and
explained using surveys and univariate analysis. Therefore, the interaction
31
 between characteristics and the overall variance in unemployment explained
by these characteristics has, to my knowledge, not yet been reported.
Additionally, to my knowledge, the perceived causes of graduate
unemployment from the unemployed graduates’ point of view has not been
reported. This is necessary as listening to the graduates’ themselves could
both deepen our understanding of graduate unemployment and allow new
perceived causes and explanations to emerge. Therefore the study adopted a
mixed methods approach with the intention for the qualitative findings to
help explain the quantitative results and in doing so deepen our
understanding of graduate unemployment.
4) A lack of evidence exists regarding the long-term effects of career services,
such as career guidance, provided by higher education institutions.
Furthermore, due to the assumptions of career guidance, and the focus on
the individual student, structural factors in the environment affecting
graduates employability have not been sufficiently studied. This gap informs
the fourth research aim, namely to explore the role of higher education
institutions career services from the unemployed graduates perspective.

32
 Chapter 3: Method

3.1 Design
I designed the study with an appreciation of both quantitative and qualitative
approaches. From the survey I wanted both generalisable data as well as a sampling
strategy for the qualitative interviews. From the interviews I wanted explanations of
the survey findings in the form of a deeper and richer understanding of the
graduates’ experiences of unemployment and its perceived causes. Therefore I
adopted a mixed methods design. According to Green, Caracelli and Graham (1989)
the underlying rationale for mixing methods was complementarity ; that is to
measure overlapping but also different facets of the same phenomena. However in
hindsight expansion was also evident; that is increasing the scope of the enquiry. In
addition to this I aimed to address achieve significance enhancement, in other words
facilitating thickness and richness of data (Collins, Onwuegbuzie & Sutton, 2006).
Creswell (2003) noted three further questions that should be considered
when designing a mixed methods study. The implementation sequence for this study
was sequential with the quantitative component being conducted first. This was
primarily because the survey provided a sampling frame for the interviews as the
groups of graduates who reported unemployment most frequently were chosen as
interview participants. Equal priority was assigned to the quantitative and
qualitative components of the research with focus placed on integration of the
results. The stages of mixing were in the data collection stage where both survey
data and interview data was collected and in the interpretation and reporting of
results in which participants’ reports of the perceived causes of graduate
unemployment and the role of their university are seen in light of the quantitative
findings. The design is primarily a sequential explanatory design (Barnes, 2012). This
design involves two phases – a quantitative phase followed by a qualitative phase
whereby the latter qualitative phase is used to explain the results of the first
quantitative phase (Barnes, 2012).
In this study the prevalence and characteristics of graduate unemployment
(research objectives one and two) were measured using the survey followed by
interviews to explain these findings and relate them to the role of higher education
33
institutions in providing career services (research objectives three and four). In
hindsight the design yielded new insights into the phenomena and therefore it could
be argued that it was both explanatory as well as exploratory.

3.2 Sample and sampling

For this study, a graduate was defined as someone whose highest qualification was
obtained from one of South Africa’s public higher education institutions. 21 981
email addresses of students who graduated from all 23 Public Higher Education
Institutions in 2009, 2010 and 2011, in both undergraduate and post-graduate
qualifications were obtained, on disk, from an independent research company called
Magnet Communications. Magnet Communications conducts employer branding
research at all of the public higher education institutions annually, and their research
does not extend to private higher education providers. My relationship with Magnet
Communications is that I worked with them for one year between 2010 and 2011, as
a consultant. The project I worked on involved developing a graduate recruitment
program for them.
Based on this relationship I was given access to their student database. They
gave me permission to use these email addresses of their research participants, for
three years of their research, and only of participants who had consented to being
contacted further for research purposes. These participants had filled in Magnet
Communication’s survey, either online or on their university campus. Although
these participants gave consent to Magnet Communications, the guidelines for
provision of confidential information from one practitioner to another, outlined by
the Health Professionals Council of South Africa (HPCSA) were adhered to. This is
discussed in the ethics section.
A breakdown of the sampling frame by race, gender, field of study is available
as Appendix 2. Of the 21 981 people who were emailed the survey, 2662 people
responded and 2029 responses made up the final sample. I received responses from
people who had not studied in South Africa, who had not studied in 2009, 2010 or
2011 and who had not previously taken part in research by the independent
research company. Therefore some people received my survey unintentionally and
of these some chose to respond while others didn’t. For this reason the final sample
34
consisted of people who graduated before 1990 and up to 2011, with the majority
(72.5%) graduating between 2006 and 2011. Comparing my final sample to the
graduates of 2007 reported by the Council of Higher Education (2009) we see that
my sample over-represented males, Whites, graduates from comprehensive
universities, science, technology and engineering graduates and post-graduates
while under-representing Blacks, universities and human and social science
graduates. A sample size calculation using the approximate graduate population
over a 5 year period, with 1% error and a confidence interval of 4, yields a required
sample of around 1040. Therefore my large sample may lead to more significant
findings than would be found with a smaller population. For this reason the p-value
is reported in conjunction with odds ratios and confidence intervals. Overall I was
satisfied with the quantitative sample and as it represented all 23 public higher
education institutions in South Africa, with good spread across educational and
demographic variables and enough variation in employment status.
In choosing the qualitative sample I used both homogenous and criterion
sampling (Onwuegbuzie & Collins, 2007). The criteria were respondents, who (1)
consented to being contacted further, (2) were unemployed and looking for work,
(3) were Black, and (4) were in the lowest two socio-economic status groups.
Criteria three and four created a homogenous sample allowing me to focus on the
perceived causes of unemployment among Black and poor graduates. These
variables by which the filter was done were chosen because they showed the highest
odds of respondents being unemployed and looking for work compared to
respondents from the other four employment statuses in the quantitative analysis.
As only 13 graduates were in the lowest socio-economic status group, respondents
in the second lowest socio-economic status group were added to the qualitative
sampling criteria.
Twenty graduates who met the four criteria above were either emailed or
sent a text message, depending on the contact details that they provided, and asked
to participate in a 30 minute telephonic interview. Ten participants replied and were
interviewed. Unfortunately the qualitative sample was small relative to the

35
quantitative sample and the implications thereof are raised in the discussion section
of this report.

3.3 The instruments

I developed the survey through reviewing questionnaires and surveys used in other
graduate employment research and including items on variables discussed in my
literature review in line with my research objectives. The survey questionnaire
(Appendix 3) was then drawn up in an online survey platform. The online
questionnaire was piloted on 18 graduates to ensure clarity of the introduction and
directions, that the definitions provided were sufficient, that the question sequence
functioned correctly, that the questions and answer options were clear and valid and
the average duration it took to answer the survey. The following changes were
made to the questionnaire as a result of the pilot.
- ‘Age’ range changed from 18-50 years to a drop down menu with 0-100 years
as answer options
- ‘Date qualification was obtained’ changed from year 1995-2011 to a drop
down menu ranging from 1980-2011
- ‘Marks obtained in final year’ was removed for PhD graduates
- ‘Funding received’ was changed from a single answer option to multiple
answer options
- ‘Private organization/individual’ was added as a response option to the
question ‘who did you receive career guidance from?’
- ‘Number of dependents’ was removed
- ‘Do you receive financial support?’ was added
- ‘I wish to be contacted further’ and ‘I wish to be sent the results’ were added
- ‘Rating of English ability’ was removed for first language English speakers

3.4 Variables
The following three tables describe the variables in the study. Table 1 describes the
dependent variables, Table 2 the independent demographic variables and Table 3
the independent educational variables.

36
 3.4.1 Dependent variable

Table 1: Dependent variables, their description and scale of measure

Name Description Scale of
measure
Employment The dependent variable in study was employment status. Categorical
status Three groups categorised the employed; those who are self-
employed, those employed on a full-time basis and those
employed on a part-time basis. Two groups, those who are
currently looking for work and those who are not currently
looking for work categorised the ‘unemployed’.
The employment variables were defined in the survey as
follows:
- Employed full-time: Employed for 35 or more hours
per week.
- Employed part-time: Employed for less than 35
hours per week.
- Self-employed: Primary employment is self-
generated and self-sustained.
- Unemployed and not looking for work.
- Unemployed and looking for work.
Under- Respondents who reported being self-employed, employed Categorical
employment full-time or employed part-time were additionally asked
whether they considered themselves to be underemployed.
Underemployment was considered both in terms of skill and
time. These variables were defined in the survey as:
- Underemployed refers to an employment situation
that is insufficient in some important way for the
employee. Examples include holding a part-time job
despite desiring full-time work, and over-
qualification, where the employee has education,
experience, or skills beyond the requirements of the
job.
- Underemployed by skill: Currently employed but the
work that you do is significantly below your skill
level.
- Underemployed by time: Currently employed part-
time and you are available and willing to work more
hours per week.

37
Duration of There seems to be consensus that the longer someone Ordinal
un- remains unemployed for, the less likely they are to secure
employment employment, therefore those who reported being
unemployed were asked how many months they have been
unemployed for; 0-3 months, 3-6 months, 6-9 months, 9-12
months, 12-15 months, 15-18 months, 18-24 months or
more than 2 years.

Although there are conceptually three dependent variables in the study, namely
employment status, underemployment and duration of unemployment, only
employment status is used as the dependent variable in the majority of the analysis.
The remaining two dependent variables aimed to indicate whether
underemployment is an area for further study and whether duration of
unemployment influences graduates’ employment prospects.

3.4.2 Independent variables

The independent variables in the study were those shown in the literature to be
important contributors to understanding youth and graduate unemployment.
Specifically they relate to education, socio-economic indicators and access to
resources required to look for work. They included both demographic and
educational variables and are described in the following two tables.

Table 2: Independent demographic variables, their description and scale of measure

Name Description Scale of
measure
Race and Race and gender are possibly the most reported variables in the Categorical
gender unemployment literature. Race was measured according to
categories commonly used in South Africa. They are Black,
Coloured, Indian and White. Due to the sensitive nature of race
categories there was an additional category for ‘other’ and an
open field. Interestingly a number of people chose other and
filled in ‘South African’, possibly indicating their resistance to the
currently used categories. Gender was catergorised as male or
female.

38
Socio- Socio-economic status was measured in four categories namely Ordinal
economic ‘not enough money for basic things like food and clothes’, ‘have
status money for food and clothes but short on many other things’,
‘have money for most important things but few luxury goods’
and the highest category ‘some money for extra things such as
going away on holiday’. These are crude categories and are
used only as indicators of respondents’ socio-economic status.
Area Participants were asked whether they have spent the majority of Categorical
their lives in a rural or an urban area. Area is significant as many
South Africans migrate from rural to urban areas in seek of jobs
and rural areas commonly have a higher unemployment rate.
Language Participants were asked what their first language is and given Categorical
the nine official languages as response options namely
Afrikaans, English, IsiNdebele, IsiXhosa, IsiZulu, Sesotho sa
Leboa, Sesotho, Setswana, SiSwati, Tshivenda and Xisonga and
‘other’ with space to fill in their first language. In addition to this
they were asked whether English is their first, second, third,
fourth or fifth language.
Age Participants filled in their age on an ordinal scale from 0-100. Ordinal
Age was then grouped into three categories of 15-24, 25-30 and
31-35, as is done by statistics SA to categorise the youth. There
were no respondents aged 15-19 so this category was relabeled
20-24. As ‘youth’ is often defined in South Africa as those up to
and including 35 years of age, participants older than this were
removed from the data.
Access to Participants were asked whether they can access various Categorical
resources resources required to conduct a job search. These resources are
a telephone, newspapers, a computer, an email account and
internet. They responded ‘yes’, ‘yes with some difficultly’ and
‘no’ to these questions.

39
Family The participants’ parents’ highest level of education was Categorical
details measured according to ordinal categories namely; having
completed primary school, having completed some high school,
having completed high school, having completed tertiary
education and ‘I don’t know’. ‘Mother’ was defined as mother
or most prominent female caregiver and father as their father or
most prominent male caregiver.
Participants were asked if they had a family member who was
self-employed and if they have a family member who is
unemployed and currently looking for work. They responded
yes, no or I don’t know. Regarding financial considerations, they
were asked if they had any dependents (yes/no) as well as if
they receive any financial support. They responded no, yes or
sometimes but not regularly to this item. Family details give
insight into the household structure, which in turn has
implications for attachment to the labour force and employment
prospects.

This concludes the demographic variables measured in the study. The following list
outlines the educational variables measured.

Table 3: Independent educational variables, their description and scale of measure

Name Description Scale of

measure
Highest Highest qualification can be argued to be an ordinal variable Ordinal
qualification given that the entry requirements generally increase with the
perceived rise in education level. That is, the Grade 12
application point score required for undergraduate studies are
generally lowest for a certificate, followed by a diploma and
then a degree. Entry level for post-graduate courses usually
requires completion of the previous level. In other words a
student must have done a degree in order to apply for an
honors degree, they must have completed an honors degree in
order to apply for a master’s degree and they must have
completed a master’s degree in order to apply for a doctorate
degree. The only exception to this is a post-graduate
certificate or diploma whereby numerous courses are offered
at various education levels. Further justification for education
as an ordinal scale of measure is that education level has been
aligned to the National Qualifications Framework and the NQF
levels assigned are lowest for diplomas and highest for
doctorate degrees. However, an alternative argument can be
made that the different education types differ fundamentally
40
 and therefore cannot be ranked. In this study education level
was treated as an ordinal scale of measure. Highest
qualification was measured in the following ascending order;
certificate, diploma, degree, honors degree, master’s degree,
doctorate degree and ‘other’. Post-graduate
certificate/diploma was most frequently reported in ‘other’
and this was then added as the highest qualification. In the
analysis the position of post-graduate certificate/diploma was
moved around as it can occur at any level of qualification.
However there were no significant changes in the results
regardless of where amongst the post-graduate courses post-
graduate diploma/certificate was placed.
Graduation Graduation year was collected as an interval scale of measure Categorical
year from 1980 to 2011. After data collection this variable was
ordered into categories namely; before 1990, 1991-1995,
1996-2000, 2001-2006 and 2006-2011.
Marks Employers often only have the graduate’s marks as an Ordinal
indication of their competence or skill (Pauw, et al., 2006),
therefore, in addition to the type of qualification, graduates
were asked what their average final year marks were for their
highest qualification; 40-49%, 50-59%, 60-69%, 70-79% and
80% and above. This was not asked of doctorate graduates, as
they generally do not receive a mark. Marks were treated as
an ordinal scale of measure however they showed non-
significant results.
Field of Field of study is a categorical variable and the categories were Categorical
study drawn up through a review of the 23 public higher education
institutions’ faculties and courses on offer as indicated on their
websites. The fields were; arts, business, commerce or
management, education, engineering or technology, health
sciences, humanities, law, sciences and other. Few
participants chose ‘other’ and I was not able to recode this
category due to the dispersed mix of courses.
University South Africa has 23 public higher education institutions. This Categorical
type is made up of 11 universities, 6 comprehensive universities
and 6 universities of technology. Universities of technology
mostly offer certificate, diploma and advanced diploma
courses. Universities offer degrees and post-graduates
degrees. Comprehensive universities offer a combination of
all of these courses. A list of the higher education institutions
and their category is available as Appendix 1. In addition to
these 23 public higher education institutions was the category
‘other’. Those respondents who studied abroad or at a private
higher education institution were removed from the sample as

41
 they are not publically funded and private institutions are not
as closely governed by Higher Education South Africa, although
they are required to be registered and accredited.
Skills and Given that English and ICT skills were identified as an Categorical
university important graduate attribute by employers (Griesel & Parker,
ratings 2009; Schoer, et al., 2012), those who did not rate English as
their first language were asked three additional questions
namely: how would you rate your ability to read in English,
how would you rate your spoken English ability, and how
would you rate your written English ability. They responded
poor, below average, average, above average or excellent. All
respondents were asked to rate their overall computer literacy
and ability to use the internet by the same categories as
above.
Respondents were also asked to rate the skills they obtained
from their university as well as the usefulness of their
qualification compared to other qualifications. For skills
obtained they responded with poor, below average, average,
above average or excellent. For usefulness they responded
less useful, equally useful or more useful. This variable is
intended to ascertain whether graduates have differing views
of the quality of education higher education institutions offer,
as employers have been shown to have (e.g. Pauw et al., 2006
& Moleke, 2003).
Career The dearth of career guidance literature implies that given the Categorical
guidance required career guidance a student should be able to manage
their career effectively. Therefore participants were asked if
they have ever received career guidance, either formal or
informal and they responded with either yes or no. Those who
responded ‘yes’ were further asked who they received career
guidance from, what the purpose of seeking career guidance
was and if the career guidance they received was helpful or
not. The answer options for who they received career
guidance from was school teacher, university counselor or
staff member, private individual or organization, family,
friends or other. The reasons for seeking career guidance was
assistance choosing high school subjects, assistance choosing
tertiary subjects, assistance with writing your CV, assistance
with interview preparation, assistance with job hunting, it was
compulsory at high school and other. Answering if they found
the career guidance useful they answered yes, somewhat, not
really or no.
Funding Funding was grouped into five categories namely; self-funded, Categorical
family funded, funded by a loan taken out by yourself or a

42
 family member, funded by a bursary and ‘other’. Within the
‘other’ option there was allowance to specify the funding.
Participants could respond to numerous categories at once. In
understanding graduate unemployment, funding is associated
with race and socio-economic status with the majority of Black
and low socio-economic status students requiring government
funding.
Work Unemployed respondents were additionally asked if they had Categorical
experience any work experience and those who did have work experience
were asked two further questions. Firstly, how many months
work experience they had with response options according to
the same categories for unemployment duration. Secondly, if
their work experience is related to their qualification or not.
Finally they were asked how many jobs they apply for per
week; less than 1, 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20 or more than 20.
These variables were considered important because Pauw et
al. (2006) reported that employers perceive graduates to be
unprepared for the workplace and it is reasonable to infer that
those with work experience have acquired some skills required
for the workplace.

3.5 Procedure and analysis

Participants were emailed an invitation to participate in this research and were given
a link where they could complete an online survey within a six week period. The
email served as the participant information sheet (see Appendix 4) and included
information on the purpose of the study, an invitation to take part and a consent
form. Consent was obtained in the first question of the survey. If the participant did
not consent to take-part in the study, the survey did not continue. 2662 responses
were obtained. Before analysis the following participants were removed from the
dataset
- Those who did not report where their highest qualification was obtained,
- those who did not complete their highest qualification in a South African
public higher education institution,
- those without a South African work permit (seen in question 27 of the
survey),
- those who did not report their employment status,
- those aged 36 years and older.

43
Removing these participants was chosen over imputing values as the sample size
was larger than that required by the formal sample size calculation. After the above
mentioned respondents were removed, the final surveyed sample consisted of 2029
participants.
Their responses were analysed using frequency distributions, chi-squared
analysis in the form of 2x2 contingency tables, odds ratios and binary logistic
regression as these are appropriate techniques for categorical data. Due to the large
sample size and the multiple significance tests run, the confidence level set at 99%
and odds ratios in addition to the statistical significance are reported. The binary
logistic regression results reveal the proportion of variance explained by multiple
independent variables on the dependent variable, namely employment status. The
assumptions of the independence of observations and minimum number of
observations in each cell for contingency tables were met. A possible limitation to
the statistical inferences lies in the non-random sampling method used.
Ten graduates agreed to be interviewed. I conducted their interviews over
the telephone at a time and date proposed by the participants. Telephonic
interviews were chosen over other qualitative data collection techniques as the
participants lived a distance from both myself and from each other. Therefore this
was the most cost and time effective way of collecting information. The duration of
the interviews ranged from 25 to 45minutes. Even though I had an interview guide
(Appendix 5) and asked the same broad guiding questions in each interview,
participants were encouraged to say whatever came to mind at any time. Some
issues emerged in this way without having been directly asked or probed by myself.
The interviews were audio recorded and thereafter transcribed in full, using
pseudonyms. Initially all interesting aspects of the data were coded across all the
interview transcripts. Thereafter, the codes were collated into themes that address
the four research aims and the key questions raised following the quantitative
analysis. Therefore the final themes represented here reflect patterns across the
entire data set and they capture important aspects of the data in relation to the
research questions. Extracts chosen to represent these themes were then

44
transcribed in more details using some Jeffersonian symbols (Jefferson, 2004) in
order to portray the conversations more accurately.

3.6 Ethics
Prior to this research, the sample participated in a Magnet Communications
survey in which they supplied their contact details to Magnet Communications and
consented to being contacted further. The Magnet Communications survey did not
give any information about the types of possible research these participant were
consenting to be contacted further for, or who could be conducting this further
research. The Magnet Communications survey simply included the item ‘Do you
consent to be contacted for further for research purposes’, with two response
options: yes or no.
According to the Health Professionals Council of South Africa (HPCSA),
information about participants can be used for research purposes. Their ethical
guidelines for best practice relating to providing client information state that
researchers have a duty to (i) protect the privacy of patients and (ii) respect their
autonomy (HPCSA, 2008).
In accordance with point (i) above, ideally Magnet Communications should
have contacted the research participants first, introduced them to my study, and
obtained specific consent for their contact information to be given to me. However
they did not do this and rather gave me the contact details of the participants who
had answered ‘yes’ to the consent item stated above. Therefore I contacted the
participants directly via email. In this email, sent from my personal university email
address to the sample, the Magnet Communication survey participants were invited
to participate in my study and given information about the study (Appendix 4). In
this email they were provided a link to the online survey. They were also given my,
the researchers, email address and were encouraged to email me with any questions
they may have or if they required further information. Some participants did so and
I replied to their emails. On opening the survey link provided in the email, the
following text appeared and participants chose one of the consent options.
I consent to participation in this study and understand that there are no benefits for
participating in this study. My results are confidential; however, direct quotations

45
 from my questionnaire may be published in an academic journal along with the final
results of the study. In such a case I will be assigned a pseudonym that will protect
my anonymity. I understand that the data will only be viewed by the researcher,
Kim Baldry, and her supervisor, and will be kept under password protection at all
times. I may be contacted at a further stage for more information.

- I consent
- I consent to partake in the study but not to being contacted further
- I consent to partake in the study but not to direct quotations being used
- I consent to partake in the study but not being contacted further or
direct quotations being used
- I do not consent and will not partake in this study

Therefore the people contacted had a choice whether to participate in my study or

not, and they were provided with necessary information to make this choice. They
could also ask any additional questions before deciding whether to participate. In
this paper results are reported on group level and no personal information is
disclosed. In these ways the participants’ privacy and autonomy are respected,
thereby meeting both of the HPCSA’s criteria. In addition to this, before any work
commenced on this study, a university ethics committee reviewed the research
proposal and permission was granted to continue with the study. The university
ethics clearance certificate is provided in the appendices as Appendix 6.
For the interviews, participants were emailed and SMSed an invitation to be
interviewed. Those who agreed were contacted telephonically at a time proposed
by them. Before the interview began, the purpose of the interview, the approximate
length of the interview and the rights of the participant were explained. These
included confidentiality, the right to refuse to answer any question and the right to
withdraw from the research at any time. The survey data, interview recordings and
interview transcripts have been stored in password protected files on my computer.
These steps taken during the interview process ensured that interviewed
participants’ rights were upheld.

46
 Chapter 4: Results
This section reports all of the survey results followed by selected interview results.
Thereafter, important findings from both are integrated and discussed in Chapter 5.

4.1 Survey results

4.1.1 Prevalence
As seen in Figure 3, the prevalence of graduate unemployment of those who are
looking for work in this sample is 5.1%. This is slightly less than the StatsSA 2011 and
2012 figure of 6.3% and 5.9% respectively and Moleke’s 6% reported in 2005. It is
well below van der Merwe’s (2009) estimate of 36.2%. As mentioned previously,
my sample over-represented males, Whites, and post-graduates. In previous
research these groups have generally had lower prevalence of unemployment.
Therefore my results are likely to indicate a conservative prevalence of
unemployment.

Figure 3: The employment status of the full sample

Figure 3
100%
82.2%
80%

60%

40%

20%
5.7% 5.1% 5.0% 2.1%
0%
Employed full- Self-employed Unemployed Employed part- Unemployed
time n1668 n115 and looking for time n101 and not looking
work n103 for work n42

Demographic variables’ frequencies

As I am primarily interested in graduate unemployment among those who are
currently looking for work, and not those who have chosen to be unemployed,
throughout the quantitative findings I have compared the group who are
unemployed and looking for work (103, 5.1%) to the other four employment
statuses. This group is sometimes referred to simply as ‘unemployed’ rather than

47
the full description of ‘unemployed and looking for work’. No-where in the results
does unemployment also refer to the group who are unemployed but not looking for
work. Table 4 shows the full sample broken down by the independent demographic
variables and Table 5 the full sample by the independent educational variables.
These frequency tables are provided to portray an overview of the full sample and
their employment status. Significant analysis results follow.

Table 4: The sample by independent demographic variables

looking for work sample

N=2029 (percentage)

N=103 (percentage)
Unemployed and
Full Sample
Gender
Female 913 (45%) 58 (6.4%)
Male 1116 (55%) 45 (4%)
Race
Black 589 (29.5%) 70 (11.9%)
Coloured 122 (6.1%) 3 (2.5%)
Indian 190 (9.5%) 6 (3.2%)
White 1098 (54.9%) 24 (2.2%)
Socio-economic status

Not enough money for basic things like food

and clothes 71 (3.6%) 13 (18.3%)

Have money for food and clothes but short

on many other things 315 (15.8%) 24 (7.6%)

Have money for most important things but

few luxury goods 579 (29%) 38 (6.6%)

Some money for extra things such as going

away on holiday 1035 (51.8%) 26 (2.5%)
Area
Urban 1723 (86.2%) 75 (4.35%)

Rural 277 (13.9%) 26 (9.4%)

48
 English is your…
1st language 772 (38.1%) 22 (2.8%)
Not your first language 1252 (61.9%) 81 (6.5%)
Age
20-24years 333 (21.6%) 37 (11.1%)
26-30 743 (54.2%) 53 (6.7%)
31-35 331 (24.2%) 12 (3.5%)
Newspaper access
Yes 1947 (98.6%) 90 (4.6%)
Yes with difficulty and no 28 (1.4%) 9 (32.1%)
Cell phone access
Yes 1962 (99.3%) 97 (4.9%)
No 13 (0.7%) 2 (15.4%)
Computer access
Yes 1958 (99.3%) 92 (4.7%)
Yes with difficulty and no 13 (0.7%) 5 (38.5%)
Internet access
Yes 1924 (97.7%) 87 (4.5%)
Yes with difficulty and no 45 (2.3%) 10 (22.2%)
Percentages in column three are relative to the specific variable level. Therefore percentages
below 5.1% indicate less prevalence of unemployment than in the overall population.
Conversely percentages over 5.1% indicate above average prevalence of unemployment.

Educational variables’ frequencies

Table 5: The sample by independent educational variables

Unemployed and
looking for work
(percentage)

(percentage)
Full Sample
N=2029

sample
N=103

Highest qualification
Certificate 8 (0.3%) 1 (12.5%)
Diploma 193 (8.3%) 14 (7.3%)
Degree 681 (29.3%) 39 (5.7%)
Honors degree 812 (35%) 33 (4.1%)
Master’s degree 500 (21.5%) 15 (3%)
Doctorate degree 106 (4.6%) 1 (0.9%)
Post-graduate diploma 22 (0.9%) 0 (0%)
49
Field of study of highest qualification
Arts 83 (4.1%) 2 (2.4%)
Bus/com/man 684 (33.9%) 41 (6%)
Education 36 (1.8%) 1 (2.8%)
Engineering/technology 584 (29%) 18 (3.1%)
Health sciences 92 (4.6%) 3 (3.3%)
Humanities 248 (12.3%) 22 (8.9%)
Law 64 (3.2%) 3 (4.7%)
Sciences 226 (11.2%) 11 (4.9%)
Other 12 (0.6%) 2 (16.7%)
University Type
University 1273 (62.7%) 57 (4.5%)
Comprehensive University 520 (25.6%) 23 (4.4%)
University of Technology 236 (11.6%) 23 (9.7%)
Graduation year of highest qualification
Before 1990 47 (2.4%) 0 (0%)
1991-1995 70 (3.6%) 0 (0%)
1996-2000 103 (5.3%) 0 (0%)
2001-2005 311 (16.1%) 3 (1%)
2006-2011 1398 (72.5%) 87 (6.2%)
Final year average marks
50s 283 (14.5%) 21 (7.4%)
60s 951 (48.6%) 50 (5.3%)
70s 594 (30.4%) 27 (4.5%)
80s and 90s 129 (6.6%) 4 (3.1%)
Funding (could select more than 1)
Self-funded 552 (21%) 19 (3.4%)
Family-funded 810 (30.8%) 42 (5.1%)
Bursary 768 (29.2%) 27 (3.5%)
Loan 504 (19.1%) 36 (7.1%)
Received career guidance
Yes 1272 (62.7%) 64 (5%)
No 757 (37.3%) 39 (5.2%)
How would you rate the usefulness of your qualification relative to other qualifications?
Less useful 200 (9%) 27 (13.5%)
Equally useful 823 (42.7%) 38 (4.6%)
More useful 968 (50.3%) 38 (3.9%)
50
 How would you rate the skills you obtained from your university?
Poor and below average 21 (1.1%) 3 (14.3%)
Average 396 (20.6%) 24 (6.1%)
Above average and excellent 1612 (83.7%) 76 (4.7%)
Percentages in column three are relative to the specific variable level. Therefore percentages
below 5.1% indicate less prevalence of unemployment than in the overall population.
Conversely percentages over 5.1% indicate above average prevalence of unemployment.

4.1.2. Underemployment
The above tables give insight into the participants who are unemployed and looking
for work compared with the other four employment statuses namely; self-employed,
employed full-time, employed part-time and unemployed and not currently looking
for work. As underemployment has been raised as a possible guise of
unemployment, respondents also reported their perceived underemployment status
as seen in Table 6.

Table 6: The employed sample by underemployment prevalence and type

Answered yes to Response to "How would you describe your
Total (valid) "Do you consider underemployment?"
yourself Skill Time Both
underemployed?"
Self 115 (113) 28 (24.8%) 14 (38.9%) 7 (19.4%) 15 (41.6%)
Employed
Employed FT 1668 (1660) 354 (21.2%) 337 (78.6%) 19 (4.4%) 73 (17%)

Employed 101 (99) 46 (45.5%) 21 (38.2%) 15 (27.3%) 19 (34.5%)

PT

Of all the people who are employed, 30.5% reported being underemployed. Of the
underemployed, the average underemployment by skill reported was 51.9%, by time
was 17% and by both was 31%. Therefore, underemployment could to some extent
camouflage the unemployment faced by graduates as if included, those who
consider themselves underemployed in the unemployed sample, the prevalence of
graduate unemployment shoots up to 26.2%. This analysis is however crude but it
does raise underemployment as an area for more in-depth study.

51
 4.1.3 Chi squared and un-adjusted odds ratios for significant results
The following three tables report the significant results of chi-squared analysis when
comparing the ‘unemployed and looking for work’ sample with the other four
employment statuses by one other variable. The results are presented in three
tables. Table 7 shows the socio-economic status variables results, Table 8 the
demographic variables results and Table 9 shows the educational variables results.

Table 7: Significant results of the socio-economic variables presented in descending

order of the unadjusted odds ratios
Un-
Other 4 Unemployed
adjusted P
employment and looking 95% C.I
odds Value
statuses* for work
ratio

No/with
19 (67.9%) 9 (32.1%)
Newspaper difficulty 4.301;
9.774 0.000
access 22.210
Yes 1857 (95.4%) 90 (4.6%)

No/with
10 (58.5%) 7 (41.2%)
Computer difficulty 4.799;
8.763 0.000
access 16.003
Yes 1866 (95.3%) 92 (4.7%)

No/with
39 (76.5%) 12 (23.5%)
Internet difficulty 3.045;
5.204 0.000
access 8.891
Yes 1837 (95.5%) 87 (4.5%)

Socio- Lowest 58 (81.7%) 13 (18.3%)

2.358;
economic 4.014 0.000
6.833
status Other three 1841 (95.4%) 88 (4.6%)

Family
member Yes 598 (92.4%) 49 (7.6%)
1.347;
unemployed 1.975 0.000
2.896
and looking No 1254 (96.2%) 50 (3.8%)
for work
* The comparison group consists of the other four employment statuses measured in the survey. These are self-
employed, employed full time, employed part-time, and unemployed and not looking for work.
α=0.01 for all results

Newspaper, computer and internet access

Of all the variables in the study, newspaper access was the most important indicator
of graduate unemployment, followed by race (Table 8), computer access, internet
access and socio-economic status. This result underpins the importance of socio-
52
economic status and access to resources with regards to understanding graduate
unemployment and is the reason why variables relating to socio-economic status
have been reported separately to the other demographic variables.
We see that graduates who can easily access a newspaper, computer and the
internet are far more likely to be employed than those who can access these with
difficulty or not at all. Given that the survey was conducted online, those who said
that they can never access the internet may have made a special effort to say so,
possibly to show that they do not consider their access sufficient. Graduates who
have difficulty accessing a newspaper are nine times more likely to be unemployed,
those with difficulty accessing a computer are eight times more likely to be
unemployed and those who have difficulty accessing the internet are five times
more likely to be unemployed compared to graduates who reported being able to
access these facilities. All of these effect sizes are largely unspecified and therefore
further quantitative research would be beneficial. Schoer et al., (2012) report that
formal channels of recruitment, in other words responding to job adverts, are
available to job seekers with completed high school education or further
qualifications and that further degrees and diplomas are associated with significantly
higher likelihood of being employed through formal channels compared to social
networks, underscoring the importance of these resources. Possible explanations
for these finding will be discussed in the qualitative results section.

Socio-economic status
After access to resources and race, socio-economic status was the fourth largest
distinguishing factor associated with graduate unemployment. Graduates in the
lowest socio-economic status group who reported having ‘not enough money for
basic things like food and clothes’ are four times more likely to be unemployed and
looking for work than are graduates in the higher three socio-economic groups. If
we look at the bottom two socio-economic groups we see that these graduates are
approximately two and a half time more likely to be unemployed and looking for
work than are the upper two socio-economic status groups. The effect size is
unspecified and further research should aim for more participants in the lowest
socio-economic status group.
53
Figure 4: Unemployed and looking for work sample by socio-economic status

Figure 4
20% 18%

16%

12%
8%
8% 7%
4% 3%
0%
Not enough Have money Have money Some money
money for for food and for most for extra
basic things clothes but important things such as
like food and short on many things but few going away on
cllothes other things luxury goods holiday

Unemployed family member

Having an unemployed family member almost doubles the likelihood that the
graduate themselves will be unemployed compared to the other four employment
statuses. In order to gain more insight into this finding it would be valuable to know,
in addition to having an unemployed family member, the ratio of employed to
unemployed members in the household as this will relate to the households socio-
economic status and attachment to the labour force. This is important because
possibly the fewer unemployed family members a household has, the more likely
they are to have resources that are required to look for a job such money, transport,
a computer and the internet. It is likely that having unemployed family members is
both a cause and a result of low socio-economic status and this alludes to the
structural and self-perpetuating cycle of poverty.

54
Table 8: Significant results of the demographic variables presented in descending
order of the unadjusted odds ratios
Un-
Other 4 Unemployed
adjusted P
employment and looking 95% C.I
odds Value
statuses* for work
ratio

Black 519 (88.1%) 70 (11.9%)

3.395;
Race 5.078 0.000
Coloured, 7.595
1377 (97.7%) 33 (2.3%)
Indian or White

I don't know 83(87.4%) 12 (12.6%)

Father's 1.521;
2.685 0.001
education Primary, high or 4.739
1722 (95.3%) 85 (4.7%)
tertiary

No 1137 (93.5%) 79 (6.5%)

1.456;
Dependents 2.315 0.000
3.682
Yes 762 (97.2%) 22 (2.8%)

20 – 30 years 1076 (92.3%) 90 (7.7%)

1.247;
Age 2.307 0.006
4.267
31-35 years 331(96.5%) 12(3.5%)

Not English 1171 (93.5%) 81 (6.5%)

First 1.429;
2.27 0.000
language 3.606
English 750 (97.2%) 22 (2.8%)

Area where
Rural 251 (90.6%) 26 (9.4%)
spent 1.406;
2.156 0.000
majority of 3.307
Urban 1648 (95.6%) 75 (4.4%)
life
Female 1071 (96%) 45 (4%)
1.078;
Gender 1.575 0.018
2.302
Male 855 (93.6%) 58 (6.4%)

* The comparison group consists of the other four employment statuses measured in the survey. These are self-
employed, employed full time, employed part-time, and unemployed and not looking for work.
α=0.01 for all results

Race
Race was the most important demographic indicator of unemployment status. The
unemployment rate was 11.9% for Black graduates and 2.3% for Coloured, Indian
and White graduates combined. Therefore Black graduates are five times more
55
likely than the other races to be unemployed and looking for work. Again, as with
the socio-economic status finding, this result should be viewed with caution due to
the unspecified effect size that is likely caused by unbalanced observations among
the four race groups. Further research should aim to get a more representative
sample.

Figure 5: Unemployed and looking for work sample by race

Figure 5
14%
11.9%
12%
10%
8%
6%
4% 3.2%
2.5% 2.2%
2%
0%
Black Indian Coloured White

Parent’s education and dependents

Graduates’ mothers’ education did not differ significantly among the unemployed
graduates and the other four employment categories, however, graduates who don’t
know what their father’s highest level of education is are two and a half times more
likely to be unemployed than graduates who do know what their father education is.
The effect size is fairly unspecified and these graduates may only be 52.1% more
likely to be unemployed but could be as much as 4.73 times more likely to be
unemployed. Further research into the implications on employment among male
and female headed households would be valuable. Altman (2003) reported concern
around persistent cycles of poverty for female headed households as she found the
return on education for African women to be much lower than that for African men.
Interestingly having dependents decreases the likelihood that a graduate will be
unemployed by more than two fold.

Age
There were significant differences among all three age groups with unemployment
highest among the younger participants. The most significant difference was
56
between the 20-30 year age group compared to the 31-35 year age group.
Graduates younger than 30 years of age were more than twice as likely to be
unemployed and looking for work as graduates who are 31-35 years old. This finding
supports the notion that the prevalence of unemployment is on the rise. As the
effect sixe is unspecified, further research should aim to gather more balanced
observations in each age group.

First language
In South Africa the majority of the Black population, including the university
population, do not speak English as their first language therefore English as a first
language, mirrors the race findings but to a slightly lesser extent. A study looking at
graduate employment from a graduate recruiter’s perspective raised English ability
and functional literacy as key determinants in graduate recruiter’s selection of
students (Pauw et al., 2006). In this research those graduates who do not speak
English as their first language were more than two times as likely to be unemployed
and looking for work than first language English speakers. Interestingly self-reported
ability to read and speak English was found to be significant, with increased ability
being associated with increased employment, whereas ability to write in English was
not significantly related to employment status.

Area
9.4% of graduates who have spent the majority of their lives in a rural area reported
being unemployed and looking for work compared to only 4.4% of graduates who
have spent the majority of their lives in an urban area. Therefore those graduates
who are predominantly from a rural area are more than twice as likely as their urban
counterparts to be unemployed. According to a Rural Education Access Plan (REAP),
defining ‘rural’ is difficult as there are different gradations of rural (Lewis, 2011).
REAP relies on students’ proximity to the nearest town, library and internet café and
the kind of structure one lives in as measures of ‘ruralness’ with the understanding
that those furthest from these resources and in poor quality housing are considered
rural. Therefore, those far from an internet café and with low-socio-economic status
are likely to make up some of the rural population, and as we found that people who

57
have difficulty accessing these resources are more likely to be unemployed, all the
factors could relate to the same underlying construct namely ‘race’.

Gender
The last significant demographic findings reported relates to gender. In this sample
females were 57.5% more likely to be unemployed and looking for work than were
males. The effect size is well specified and therefore the finding can be regarded as
a fairly accurate reflection of the larger graduate population. More females
graduate annually than males but this does not explain why their proportion of
unemployment is higher than for males. However, previous unemployment
literature found a far greater difference in the unemployment of females over males
(e.g. Altman, 2003) and this research indicates that in line with national
unemployment statistics, discrepancy in unemployment by gender is narrowing.

58
Table 9: Significant results of the educational variables presented in descending
order of the unadjusted odds ratios
Un-
Other 4 Unemployed
adjusted 95%
employment and looking P Value
odds C.I
statuses* for work
ratio
University of
213 (90.3%) 23 (9.7%)
Higher technology
1.402;
education University or 2.184 0.001
1713 3.403
institution comprehensive 80 (4.5%)
(95.5%)
university

Humanities 226 (91.1%) 22 (8.9%)

Field of 1.241;
1.951 0.004
study Other, not 1700 3.065
81 (4.5%)
humanities (95.5%)

Loan 468 (92.9%) 36 (7.1%)

1.196;
Funding 1.785 0.004
Self, family, 2042 2.664
88 (4.1%)
bursary (95.9%)
Certificate,
750 (93.3%) 54 (6.7%)
diploma, degree
Highest 1.153;
Honors, master’s, 1.679 0.006
qualification 2.446
doctorate, post- 1176 (96%) 49 (4%)

graduate diploma
* The comparison group consists of the other four employment statuses measured in the survey. These are self-
employed, employed full time, employed part-time, and unemployed and not looking for work.
α=0.01 for all results

Higher education institution and field of study

Graduates from a university of technology are more than twice more likely than are
graduates from a comprehensive university or a university to be unemployed and
looking for work. This is difficult to relate to other findings that report historically
Black and historically White status (e.g. Moleke 2005, 2010) as most universities of
technology are a result of a merger between a historically Black and a historically
White institution (see Appendix 1).
The only time there is a significant difference in employment status between
the different fields of study is when humanities is compared with all other fields of
study combined. This mirrors Moleke’s (2005, 2010) findings in which she reports
59
that fields of study with little professional focus have the highest prevalence of
graduate unemployment. Relating Moleke’s report to these results it is possible that
some humanities courses have the lowest degree of professional focus (e.g.
Communications) as there is highest prevalence of unemployment of graduates in
this field of study. Similarly some art courses have high degrees of professional focus
(e.g. Jewelry design), therefore this field of study shows the lowest prevalence of
unemployed graduates.

Figure 6: Unemployed and looking for work sample by field of study

Figure 6
10%
8.9%

8%

6.0%
6%
4.9% 4.7%
4% 3.3%
3.1%
2.8% 2.4%
2%

0%
Humanities B,C or M* Sciences Law Health Engineering Education Arts
sciences or
technology

*B,C or M refers to business, commerce or management.

Funding
University funding could be considered as either a socio-economic status or
educational variable. As this research did not question why the graduate funded
their studies as they did, it is difficult to categorise this variable. For example, did
they take out a loan because their parents could afford to pay for university or did
they take out a loan because that was the norm in their family? Further research
should question in more depth why a student used the funding channels that they
used in order to understand more clearly whether funding is related to the students
financial situation, or possible other variables such as their family norms or Grade
12 results.

60
 Graduates whose studies were funding by a loan were 78.5% more likely to
be unemployed when compared to graduates who studies were funded either by
themselves, by a family member or through a bursary they obtained. However,
numerous graduates reported having multiple types of funding that commonly
differed from one year to the next, and therefore often students who received a loan
also used another type of funding too. As mentioned in the literature review, in
2009 the National Student Financial Aid Scheme allocated 93% of their loans were to
Blacks, 5% to Coloureds, 2% to Whites and 1% to Indians (National Student Financial
Aid Scheme, 7 January 2013 ), indicating that funding is closely related to race.

Highest qualification
Looking at the difference in unemployment by the highest qualification presented in
Figure 7 below, we see that the there is a steady decline in unemployment with
increased education level. Interestingly, there is not a statistically significant
different between the groups with the exception of a split between degree and an
honors degree. Therefore people in this sample who have a certificate, a diploma or
a degree are 67.9% more likely to be unemployed and looking for work than
graduates with an honors degree, master’s degree, doctorate degree or post-
graduate diploma.

Figure 7: Unemployed and looking for work sample by highest qualification level

Figure 7
14% 12.5%
12%
10%
7.3%
8%
5.7%
6% 4.1%
4% 3.0%
2% 0.9%
0.0%
0%

61
 To end the significant results section I look at the interactive effects of the
five variables with the highest odds of graduate unemployment; that is newspaper,
computer and internet access, race, and socio-economic status. It is important to
note that they are related. Those with limited financial resources would spend
money on food and clothes before newspapers, computer and internet access given
that they are a necessity to survival. In South Africa, the Black population are
relatively poorer than the other race groups and therefore it is not surprising that
the race findings mirror the socio-economic findings. Looking at StatsSA results for
2011 we see “the significant differences in average annual household income across
the different population groups. Black African-headed households were found to
have an average annual income of R60 613 in 2011. Coloured-headed households
had an average of R112 172 in 2011, while the figure for Indian/Asian-headed
households stood at R251 541. White-headed households had the highest average
household income at R365 134 per annum” (p.37), therefore Black graduates on
average are expected to have a lower socio-economic status.
Reading the multivariate level Nagelkerke pseudo R2, the binary logistic
regression results show that being Black accounts for the most variance in
employment status at 10.2%. This is followed by either having difficulty accessing
the internet or a newspaper or no internet access each accounting for 3.3% variance,
difficulty accessing a computer or no computer access explaining 3.1% variance and
lastly being in the lowest socio-economic status group accounts for 2.6% variance in
employment status. Finally, taken together these variables account for 12.8%
variance in unemployment status. In other words, 87.2% of the difference between
the graduates who are unemployed and looking for work compared to the other four
employment statuses is not explained by these variables. This signifies the
importance of further explorative and qualitative research.

62
 4.1.2 Non-significant results
The following section reports descriptive and non-significant findings.

Job applications
Interestingly, the majority of unemployed graduates only apply for 1-5 jobs per
week. Assuming that graduates have CV writing, interviewing and job searching
skills acquired through their higher education institutions’ career services, there are
most likely other reasons preventing them from applying for jobs more often.
Possible explanations are the lack of resources required to look for work that were
provided by the higher education institution to students but are not available to
graduates. This could also relate to a number of other factors, among them the
expense of conducting a job search and emotional consequences of unemployment
(for example demotivation and feelings of hopelessness).

Work experience
93.2% of the graduates who are unemployed and looking for work reported that
they have work experience. Of these 50% said that their work experience is related
to their qualification, 19.8% said that it is somewhat related to their highest
qualification and 30.2% said that their work experience is not related to their highest
qualification. The majority of unemployed graduates reported having more than
two years work experience as indicated in the Figure 9. Work experience as a cause
of graduate unemployment was therefore not supported in the quantitative findings,
however, it was raised as a perceived cause of graduate unemployment in the
interviews. Therefore a more nuanced understanding of work experience is required
but is not addressed in this research.

63
Figure 8: Unemployed and looking for Figure 9: Unemployed and looking for
work sample by job applications per work sample by duration of work
week experience

Figure 8 Figure 9
60 40

Number of observations
35
Number of observations

49
50 30
40 25
20
30 15
20 10
12 13
10 9 5
10 4 0
0
1-5 6-10 Less More 11-15 16-20
than 1 than Number of months work
20 experience

Length of unemployment
Length of unemployment is 0 to 9 months for the majority of unemployed graduates
with the rate dropping between 9 and 18 months. Unfortunately these results are
not elaborated upon further, however, they give insight into when graduates are
most vulnerable to unemployment and can be used to inform higher education
institutions’ services provided to their graduates.

Figure 10: Unemployed and looking for work sample’s duration of unemployment

Figure 10
25
Number ofs observation

20

15

10

0
0-3 3-6 6-9 9-12 12-15 15-18 18-24 24+
Number of months unemployed

64
Career guidance and marks
Surprisingly, whether the graduate had received any form of formal or informal
career guidance or not was not significantly related to their employment status.
Career guidance was not defined in the survey, as is unknown what types of career
services graduates would consider to be career guidance. This could possibly be both
a strength and limitation of the question.
Average final year marks obtained was also not significantly related to
employment status. Therefore, those with low marks and who have not received
any kind of career guidance are no less likely to be unemployed than high academic
achievers or graduates who have received career guidance. This raises questions
about the importance of career guidance in securing employment and the
importance graduate recruiters place on graduates marks in their selection process.
Given that career services focus on the provision of career counseling and
assessment, it is interesting that the measure of the effectiveness of these services
does not appear to relate to the employment of graduates.
To conclude the quantitative finding, in my opinion these were the key
questions raised; a) how and why do access to resources, race and socio-economic
status account for 12.8% of the variance in graduate unemployment, b) what
accounts for the remaining 87.2% of variance not measured in this survey? And
relating to the role of higher education institutions c) why is the presence of career
guidance unrelated to graduate unemployment?

4.2 Interview results

Given the findings above, interviews were done with survey respondents who
reported being unemployed and looking for work, Black, and in the lowest two socio-
economic status groups. The interview transcripts that relate to the study’s
research objectives and to the key questions following from the survey analysis are
presented here.
Relating to the research question of the perceived causes of unemployment,
participants mostly raised socio-economic status and discriminatory recruitment
practices as obstacles to gaining employment. Interestingly, participants were not
specifically asked about either of these factors. Additionally they were not informed
65
about the sampling criteria for the interviews, and therefore did not know that they
were chosen on the basis of their reported low socio-economic status. Therefore the
role of socio-economic status presented as an important factor in both the
quantitative and qualitative findings. In the qualitative results socio-economic status
is presented in two themes, namely: the role of finances for the participant as both a
student and a graduate, and with respect to the role of resources required to look
for work. The interview transcripts assists in explaining why resources were shown
to have an important association with graduate unemployment in the survey
findings, and expand our understanding of the role of newspaper, computer and
internet access in the job search process. The third theme relates to the role of the
university and the career services they offer. Possible short-comings of higher
education career services are identified and these go a small way is possibly
explaining why career guidance was not found to be associated with employment
status in the survey results. The fourth and final theme covers discriminatory
recruitment practices as a perceived causes of graduate unemployment. This theme
expands our understanding of graduate unemployment by again explaining the role
of resources required to look for work, as well as the role of graduate recruiters in
graduates’ job search process.
The extracts were transcribed using symbols developed by Jefferson (2004) in
order to display the spoken interview more accurately in written from. The symbols
used and their meaning are presented in Figure 11. In the extracts each line is
numbered to allow reference to parts of the conversation. The line number is
followed by the first three letters of the interviewer or participant’s name. The
interviewer is always myself, namely Kim.

66
Figure 11: Jefferson symbols used in the presented extracts
Symbol Meaning Example
- :hyphen Halting, abrupt cut off of sound or Whe- it happened afterwards
word
(( )) :double parenthesis Non-verbal details ((laughs))
( ) :single parenthesis Transcription doubt (not sure what was said)
= :equal sign Latching of contiguous utterances, Kim: Im just=
with no interval or overlap
Par: Ok
Kim: =saying that
:underline Vocalic emphasis No they didn’t
! : exclamation mark Animated speech tone Wow!

The first five extracts provide evidence that finance is an important issue for poor
students and graduates. Extract 1 indicates how funding can dictate what course a
prospective student is eligible to apply for, Extracts 2 and 3 indicate issues for
current students relating to finances, Extract 4 raises problems regarding graduating
for poor students and Extract 5 raises studying further as an option in order to
escape unemployment. Taken together they provide evidence that finances can be
an issue entering, during and exiting higher education.
Extracts 6 to 9 highlight the resources required by graduates in order to look
for work, specifically the cost of looking for a job and its debilitating effects on poor
graduates. Extract 10, together with information found in extracts 6-9, relates to
potential short comings of higher education institutions’ career services.
Extract 11 raises the presence and pervasive nature of networking and
bribery in recruitment. Extracts 12 through to 16 give examples of bribes together
Extracts 11-16 relate to the fourth theme: Discriminatory recruitment practices.

4.2.1 Theme 1: Finances as an issue entering, during and exiting higher

education
The first extract occurs at the beginning of the interview. Line one starts with the
first question of the interview after the purpose of the study and confidentiality have
been explained. Sizwe, the respondent, reported in the survey that he is 23 years
old and graduated in January 2012 with a national diploma (referred to in the

67
interview as a BTech) in financial information systems from the Central University of
Technology in the Free State.

Extract 1: Influence of finance when entering university

1 Kim: Um so the first thing that I want to ask you is can you just
2 tell me since you finished high school wha- what have you
3 done?
4 Siz: Ah I’m just studying, furthering my studies up until now
5 Kim: Ok so what year did you finish matric?
6 Siz: Eh two thousand and seven
7 Kim: And then how did you choose where you were going to study
8 and what you were going to study?
9 Siz: ((deep breath)) Ok ah how did I choose- ok eh I think, I
10 was, I was thinking of doing BCom Accounting in the
11 University of the Free State but eh because of my ah points,
12 ye entry points, to be admitted to the varsity eh to get a
13 loan cos I was admitted to the University of the Free State
14 but my points were so low that I can’t get financial
15 assistance so I choose to come to University of the Free
16 State or Central University of Technology=
17 Kim: Ok
18 Siz: =so that I completed my ap- qualification there
19 Kim: Ok so did you have enough points for a BCom but the loan
20 wouldn’t cover you?
21 Siz: Ja ja the loan wouldn’t cover me cos they wanted thirty two
22 points for loan so I had thirty points so I couldn’t
23 ((laughs)) ja
24 Kim: Ok and then, so what did you study instead of a BCom?
25 Siz: I I studied financial information systems which is more
26 related to a BCom so
27 Kim: Ok and is that a diploma or is it a BA?
28 Siz: Ja its BTech
29 Kim: BTech?
30 Siz: Ja
31 Kim: Did you get funding for it?
32 Siz: Ja I did get funding for it
33 Kim: Ah who from?
34 Siz: Ah from NSFAS ((National Student Financial Aid Scheme))
35 Kim: Oh so NSFAS would let you study the BTech but they would let
36 you study the BCom?

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37 Siz: Ja
38 Kim: Ok so you would have liked to have done the BCom but because
39 they couldn’t fund you for that you chose a BTech instead?
40 Siz: Ja I chose BTech instead because they need to fund me for
41 BTech

In this extract we see that a student’s university choice and their course choice is
influenced by their funding requirements, in this case the lack of funding. Siwze
indicates that he needed a loan when he says “Ja I chose BTech instead because they
need to fund me for BTech” (line 40-41). His example is important because he
wanted to study at a university but was forced to study at a university of technology
and the survey results showed that graduates from a university of technology are
more than twice as likely as graduates from a comprehensive university or a
university to be unemployed and looking for work.
When Sizwe talks about his ‘points’ he is referring to his Application Point Score
(APS) which is derived by assigning each subject that he completed in Grade12 a
certain allocation of points. Learners get more points the higher their high school
marks are and also for subjects passed on higher grade rather than on standard
grade. In other words, his performance in high school, particularly Grade12, has
dictated the loan amount that he can receive from NSFAS, which in turn has dictated
the types of courses and universities to which he can apply. Van der Berg (2008)
showed that socio-economic status plays a major role in educational outcomes of
primary and high school achievement and that historically White and Indian schools
still far out perform Black and Coloured schools in Grade 12 exams and performance
tests at various levels. Therefore students from low socio-economic status
households and historically Black or Coloured schools are disadvantaged before they
even enter into the higher education environment not only because of their inferior
education but also by their limiting access to loans. It also shows that policies that
govern the allocation of loans could play an important role in perpetuating
inequalities between various groups by restricting loan amounts based on
application point scores. This extract elaborates on the relationship between socio-
economic status, educational outcomes (marks obtained and course studied) and
race and provides a possible explanation as to why being Black and in the lowest

69
socio-economic status group was strongly related to unemployment in the survey
findings. Interestingly, in the quantitative analysis, graduates’ final year marks were
not significantly related to employment status as those with lower marks were no
more likely to be unemployed than graduates with higher marks. Therefore is
appears that educational achievement (marks) play an important role for learners
entering higher education by influencing the courses to which they can apply, but
that they do not affect students employment prospects upon graduation.
Peter, the respondent in the following extract, reported in the survey that he
is 23 years old and graduated from the Durban University of Technology with a
National Diploma in Information Technology in December 2010. His family funded
his studies and he has other unemployed people in his family. He reported being
unemployed for more than two years at the time of the survey.

Extract 2: Finances at university

1 Kim: Is there is there anything you think your university would
2 be able to do to help you find a job? I know you’ve got work
3 now but if you think for that whole period when you weren’t
4 employed=
5 Pet: Ehe
6 Kim: =is there anything that they would have been able to do to
7 help you?
8 Pet: Eh one thing that I’ve realised about our university=
9 Kim: Mhm
10 Pet: =it is mostly business minded, the manager they are are very
11 business minded to the extent that eh there are, if you you
12 can pass a date or the due date of the payment they will
13 definitely call you and tell you that “No you have made the
14 deadline you have to pay” and they put the increase and
15 stuff like that but eh eh after I I graduated they didn’t
16 give me a letter
17 Kim: Mm
58 Pet: A reference telling that “No this particular student eh he
59 he he can be now in a state of being employed”
60 Kim: Ja
61 Pet: “So may you please grant him that opportunity”
62 Kim: Ja
63 Pet: Yes “I am the lecturer or his professor”

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64 Kim: Ja.
65 Pet: Yes
The previous extract showed how finances were restricting to the learner when
applying for higher education. This example shows that while at university, as an
enrolled student, finances can continue to be an issue. Peter tells us that if a
payment is missed, then the university will call you and tell you “you have to pay”
(line 14). He also notes that they “put the increase” (line 14). Most noteworthy is
that when asked if there is anything that his university can do to help him find a job,
the first issue he raises is one relating to finances and the implications for not
making the university payments. His response does not particularly relate to finding
a job, as was asked in the question, but rather to perceived unfair treatment
wherein the university puts pressure on the student to pay their finances, as well as
the increase, and in return the student does not receive a reference letter to assist
him in finding employment. Interestingly Peter is making the connection between
paying fees while at university and being unemployed after graduation. In this way
he is giving us insight into how he believes finances and unemployment are
connected in a way that supports the recurring nature of poverty. He said in the
survey that his family has paid for his studies and as his concern with being
unemployed relates to income and not to other aspects of the job, for example
meaningful activity, it is possible to infer that he feels a financial burden as a result
of his university fees. Therefore we see that money can be an issue for poor
students while at university and that this burden continues after graduation and into
unemployment.
Lastly, Peter believes that a reference letter from his professor or lecturer
would assist his job search. Interestingly this is not a service mentioned anywhere
on any of the higher education institutions career services websites. This indicates a
possible service that higher education institutions could offer to their unemployed
graduates.
The following extract is also taken from Peter’s interview and it shows a
different way that finances are an issue while at university. This extract occurs later
in the interview to the previous one.

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Extract 3: Strikes relating to finances
1 Kim: What do you think makes it more difficult for graduates to
2 find jobs? Are there other things that you haven’t already
3 said?
4 Pet: Eh I think I think eish because I don’t- or maybe it is
5 because of ah ah lack of job creation
6 Kim: Ok
7 Pet: Of job creation and also ah I’m not quite sure about this
8 one but it’s just an assumption
9 Kim: Ja?
10 Pet: That maybe ah ah the the the- it also depends on the
11 university or the college that you come from maybe eh some
12 other companies they do a selection according to where the
13 person has been studying
14 Kim: Ok why do you think this might be stopping you from getting
15 a job?
16 Pet: Eh first thing first in a our our university, the university
17 that I’m from=
18 Kim: Ja?
19 Pet: =every eh eh year maybe in two time a year or a three times
20 a year there was a strike
21 Kim: Ja
22 Pet: At the beginning of the year and also eh eh around June
23 there was a strike and then that strike it always appears on
24 the news it always appears on the newspapers and other media
25 eh to show that- and I think when when when the employer’s
26 looking at the news and they see this ah school they like
27 strikes and so so forth and then I finish=
28 Kim: Ja
29 Pet: =at the end I I I finish my studies=
30 Kim: Mhm
31 Pet: =and I want to I want to get a job by applying, first thing
32 first they will see this person comes from Durban University
33 of Technology. Durban University of Technology it is well
34 known by the strikes
35 Kim: Ja
36 Pet: They like to strike and the strikes they become so heavy
37 that eh eh students they are getting shot at and
38 ((inaudible)) sorry to say so
39 Kim: Ja

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40 Pet: So the employer won’t like that type of a employee to come
41 and work for him or for her
42 Kim: Ja
43 Pet: Eh I think that plays a role. Eh Wits University it is not
44 known for the strikes
45 Kim: Ja
46 Pet: Eh TUT they like to strike but not that much. Eh
47 Stellenbosch I’ve never heard that Stellenbosch University
48 they are striking or maybe they are striking but eh the
49 strike is very normal or it is very low
50 Kim: Ja. Ok.
60 Pet: Yes ma’am.
In this extract Peter refers to the prevalence of strikes at his university, the role of
the media in exposing these strikes and the magnitude of the strikes as factors which
influence his university’s reputation. All of these aspects add to our understanding
of how a higher education institution’s reputation is built, and could provide
alternative explanations for why graduate recruiters prefer to visit only selected
higher education institutions for their marketing and recruitment activities found by
Pauw et al. (2008). In Peter’s opinion, the first thing an employer will see in his job
application is that he comes from Durban University of Technology and “Durban
University of Technology it is well known by the strikes“ (lines 33-34) and “So the
employer won’t like that type of a employee to come and work for him or for her”
(lines 40-41). In other words he is saying that employers make recruitment decisions
based on factors relating to the higher education institution’s reputation rather than
on individual characteristics of the graduate and that employers have preconceived
ideas about graduates based on the higher education institution that they attended.
This extends the importance of finances past the students’ difficulties in entering the
university, paying for their fees and possibly repaying family loans, to a disadvantage
in the workforce. This appears to be a well-considered answer as Peter can
comment on the presence of strikes at three other universities namely Wits (line 43),
TUT (line 46) and Stellenbosch University (line 47). Peter’s response here supports
the importance of studying graduate unemployment from a community psychology
perspective by showing how the reputation of a university is established, how the
university is portrayed by the media, and how this message is used by graduate

73
recruiters in turn influencing the graduates’ job search and resulting employment
prospects.
If I look at the news headlines from 2009 to 2012, I see that during these
strikes the students demanded, amongst other things, better financial assistance for
first year and fourth year students and for their book allowance to be increased.
This provides further evidence that poor students are faced with financial problems
whilst at university and these problems may result in either poor academic
performance (due to lack of test books for example) or even dropout (due to unpaid
fees). As a result of poor students communicating their poverty related issues to the
university and public through strikes, they become at greater risk of poverty
(through unemployment) because of the negative perception employers have of
their university. Furthermore, whether Peter himself has participated in these
strikes or not is inconsequential as the reputation resulting from these strikes relates
to the entire institution and all of its graduates and not only to the students who
participate in the strikes. Therefore the resulting disadvantage in the work place is
outside of individual student’s control. Reputation resulting from these strikes could
also possibly explain why graduate employers only visit certain higher education
institutions for their graduate recruitment fairs. Therefore, in addition to the
perceived poor quality of education at historically Black institutions and lack of
infrastructure required for graduate recruitment fairs at certain universities, factors
relating to students’ poverty also negatively affect graduate recruiters’ perception of
the higher education institution and their decisions around where to focus their
company’s advertising and graduate recruitment activities.
In the following extract Sizwe, from Extract 1, explains how his lack of
finances delayed his graduation date, which in turn negatively influenced his
employability.

Extract 4: Finances delay graduation

1 Kim: Ok um have you had any experiences when you’ve been looking
2 for a job umm that you can remember that have been good
3 experiences or bad experiences, um in looking for a job?

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4 Siz: Eish ah the problem is I didn’t have my certificate up until
5 October because I was owing so they only paid my fees around
6 October and then that’s when I started to have my
7 qualification so I can apply, so since from January til now
8 ((November)) I’ve been applying with my statement of results
9 and they don’t consider me so, it was hard for me to find a
10 job during this year because of I didn’t have my
11 qualifications you see?
12 Kim: Ok
13 Siz: So since October- so I’ve started applying and at least eh
14 I’m getting ah positive responses
15 Kim: Ok
15 Siz: Ja
Sizwe received his qualification certificate a period after he had completed his
qualification because his student fees were unpaid. This is a standard practice
amongst higher education institutions whereby a qualification is only granted if the
student’s fees have been settled in full. Therefore, students’ with access to money
can graduate before classmates who do not have sufficient funds to settle their
university account. Siwze spent ten months applying for work using his statement of
results rather than his certificate. He believes that this is why he has not been
considered for any positions to which he has applied. Now that he has his certificate
he says “at least eh I’m getting ah positive responses” (lines 13-14). In other words,
in Sizwe’s opinion the problem of not having his graduation certificate is caused by a
lack of finances and results in lowered employment prospects. Given that the
growing unemployment rate in South Africa can be largely attributed to those who
have never previously held a job and who enter unemployment when they enter the
labour force (Kingdon & Knight, 2000a) and that graduates from historically Black
institutions are more susceptible to this because they are absorbed into the labour
market more slowly than those from historically White institutions (Moleke, 2003), it
becomes clear that these factors can have compounding negative results for the
already disadvantaged poor Black population.
This extract also indicates how higher education policies influence graduate
unemployment. If the higher education institution offered alternative forms of
evidence that the student has graduated, besides their final certificate, Sizwe may

75
have been able to secure employment soon after finishing his course. In addition to
the higher education institution offering reference letters to unemployed graduates,
they could also provide reference letters indicating that the student has completed
all of their courses and are in a position to be employed, even though they have not
officially graduated. Similarly, graduate recruiters could be more lenient in their
application process regarding the documents they require of the applicant in these
situations. Recruiters could make provisions for certain students to apply for work at
their company with other evidence of their qualification besides the graduation
certificate.
The last extract on the theme of finances as an issue entering, during and
exiting higher education is from Lebo’s interview. Lebo studied a one-year
foundation programme at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and continued into an
undergraduate diploma in biochemistry. Thereafter she taught in a school for two
years and then went on to study honors in microbiology from which she graduated
in 2010. On completion of her honours course she did a one-year internship and at
the time of the interview she had been unemployed for 11 months. In this extract
she tells us that she is enrolling from a master’s degree to escape the frustration of
unemployment, and that furthering her education is secondary to the importance of
the R3000 per month that she will receive from her education bursary.

Extract 5: Studying further to escape unemployment

1 Leb: Honestly umm between me and you I’m just doing my master’s
2 because I was getting really frustrated sitting at home and
3 not being able to do anything so at least master’s they said
4 there’s a bursary and at least I can get three thousand
5 rand a month so I thought “So ok it’s fine at least I’ll be
6 getting my master’s and getting that particular amount where
7 I can be able to buy myself things, underwears or food
8 whatever” so that was the main reason but I believe now
9 that maybe doing my master’s is going to help me in some way
10 or get me in somewhere- as I said it’s in DUT and they’re
11 connected with companies so I believe maybe something good
12 is going to come out of this.
13 Kim: Ja
14 Leb: Ja

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15 Kim: Ok so is- ja- ok- so you’re going to do the MTech hey?
16 Leb: Ja
17 Kim: Ok and is your- is your MTech paid for by DUT or is it paid
18 for by NSFAS or by someone else?
19 Leb: It’s paid by DUT.
((some conversation missing on how bursary works))
20 Kim: Ok so you’re not going to have any financial difficulties
21 while you do your master’s?
22 Leb: As long as they give me the bursary so I can have money to
23 travel, you know- no. I’m still waiting for the response
24 from the bursary because it’s all about the bursary if they
25 don’t give me the bursary then I’ll have to drop out because
26 I still don’t have money to go there
27 Kim: Ja
28 Leb: Ja

In this extract Lebo explains how she is “just doing [her] master’s because [she] was
getting really frustrated sitting at home and not being able to do anything” (lines 1-
3). In other words, the primary reason for her enrolling in a master’s degree is not
because of the career prospects it will provide her but to escape the frustration of
being unemployed. She is also not confident that her master’s degree will increase
her employment prospects evident when she says “maybe something good is going
to come of this” (lines 11-12). On the other hand Lebo says that “it’s in DUT and
they’re connected with companies so I believe maybe something good is going to
come out of this” (lines 10-12). This shows that she expects her university to assist
her in some way through its connections with companies. Therefore she
acknowledges the importance of connections in gaining employment and indicates
that in addition to studying personal networks through family and friends, graduate
employment should study the scope and quality of the higher education institution’s
connections as well. This provides evidence for more in-depth research into the role
of connections in relation to graduate unemployment, and to expand the study of
connections to include those of the higher education institutions as well as the
graduates personal connections. Further on she tells us that she will have to drop
out if she doesn’t receive the bursary, indicating the magnitude of the importance of
the bursary and showing that having her honors degree has not resulted in any

77
financial security. She reiterates this when she says “it’s all about the bursary” (line
24).
This extract is important because it reveals the persistence of poverty as a
debilitating factor in poor people’s lives. Lebo has an honors degree but is
unemployed and therefore still reliant on bursaries. Furthermore, she does not
want to highlight her situation as she says “between me and you” (line 1). Later in
the interview Lebo talks about the humiliation and pressure of being the only person
from her area to have an honors degree but that she is still unemployed. As a result
she feels the burden of poverty as well as the humiliation of being unemployed. This
extract shows how poverty can continue to be debilitating years after graduation
and not only ten months after graduation as mentioned by Sizwe and loosely
mirrored in the survey findings.
Therefore, from the first five extracts we see evidence that socio-economic
status (a) affects learners entry into university, for example through the Application
Point Score they achieved in Grade 12 and through their reliance on a loan, (b)
affects student’s behavior and experiences while at university, for example the
necessity to strike or delayed graduated due to unpaid fees, and (c) is persistent in
nature and continues to affect graduates experiences years after graduation.
Importantly, these unique obstacles that poor students and graduates face
potentially lead to increased likelihood of unemployment, further perpetuating the
financial difficulties they experience. This underpins the importance of
understanding graduate unemployment from a holistic perspective, appreciating the
role of the individual, the role of their higher education institution and the role of
graduate recruiters.

4.2.2 Theme 2: Resources required by graduates in order to look for work

The following four extracts continue looking at the role of finances for unemployed
graduates but specifically look at resources required to look for work, in which
finances play a large role.
Lindy, in Extract 6, completed high school in 2004. In 2005 her mother paid
for her to redo Grade 12 at a private institution in order to increase her marks as she
wanted to study radiography but due to her Grade 12 marks she did not qualify.
78
Unfortunately she did not improve her marks during this year and as a result
registered for a diploma in translation and interpretation instead of radiography, as
the entry requirements are lower. She completed the three-year diploma in 2008
and went on to do a postgraduate diploma (namely BTech) in translation and
interpretation, all at Durban University of Technology. She completed her BTech, a
two-year course, in 2010 and graduated in 2011. Since then she has been
unemployed and looking for work.

Extract 6: Cost of a job search and university resources

1 Kim: Ok. Umm that’s all of the questions I have but maybe if you
2 just take a little time to think about- is there anything
3 else that you would want to tell me, that you think would
4 help me understand umm why some graduates are unemployed?
5 Anything about your life or your experience that I might
6 have not asked you, that I might be missing- to understand
7 why some graduates are unemployed?
8 Lin: I think as for my experience as I come from a poor family
9 Kim: Ja?
10 Lin: I sometimes can not get the right resources where I see like
11 a post in the newspaper, it will take me some time to apply
12 for a job so or else email my CV so I have to go like to
13 take a taxi in order for myself to get an access to the
14 internet where I will pay like ten rand per hour to send my
15 CV
16 Kim: Ja
17 Lin: So even where- when I go to post office I have to take a
18 taxi from home to go to post office and buy envelopes and
19 all this stuff to send my CV so I think that also have a
20 huge impact
21 Kim: Ja. Do you think you would apply for more jobs if you had
22 better resources?
23 Lin: Yes I think so
24 Kim: Ok
25 Lin: Because it’s sometimes happen I see a post I don’t have
26 money to go to an internet or go to post office I end up not
27 applying for that job. Yes
28 Kim: How much do you think it costs you for one job application?
29 Lin: Ah I think forty rands
30 Kim: Ok what is that-
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31 Lin: Cos I have to take a taxi from home to Durban which costs me
32 fourteen rands
33 Kim: Mhm
34 Lin: Which means the return is twenty eight rands
35 Kim: Mhm
36 Lin: So and then I have to buy envelopes I have to do copies
37 that’s that’s it
38 Kim: Ok and how much does the envelope and the copies and the
39 post normally cost?
40 Lin: Ah ok the fast mail it’s normally cost fifteen rands, the
41 ordinary mail it’s cost nine rands so its depends on the
42 closing date of the post
43 Kim: Ok and then you-
44 Lin: Cos if like today it’s Wednesday if the closing date is on
45 Friday you have to to use fast mail
46 Kim: Ja. So if you had to apply now it would be even more than
47 forty rand, it would be your transport twenty eight rand
48 then to print to use the computer and to print might be- how
49 much?
50 Lin: It will be three or five rands depends depending on which
51 internet café you use
52 Kim: Ok so then that’s say that’s five rand then you’ll also pay
53 fifteen rand for the postage
54 Lin: Yes so while- it was easy the time I was at university
55 because I was printing for free the only thing that I was
56 paying for it was envelopes
57 Kim: Ja
58 Lin: Cos copy I was doing copy for free at the library and
59 printing for free so since now since I’m not working and
60 studying I have to pay for all these things
61 Kim: Ja so do you think if your university had a service that
62 people who have graduated from there can still go and use
63 their facilities that would help you?
64 Lin: Yes yes
Lindy positions herself as someone who comes from “a poor family” (line 8) without
me saying anything about money previously in the interview or in our
communication prior to the interview. She therefore corroborates the survey
findings that socio-economic status is significantly related to employment, as she
sees being poor as definitive aspect of her unemployment. She goes on to say that “I

80
think that also have a huge impact” (line 19 and 20) indicating her perceived
magnitude of the impact of money on her employment prospects. She articulates
the costs involved in applying for a job which include buying a newspaper, transport,
buying envelopes, doing photocopies, mailing her application and the cost of the
internet café. In her estimation a single job application costs R40. Given that the
average household income differs significantly by race, with Black households having
the lowest income of R69 632 per annum or R5 802 per month (StatsSA, 2012) this is
an exorbitant amount. As she stated in the survey that she lived in a rural area most
of her life and StatsSA reports the average income in rural areas to be lower, it is
possible that her household income is even lower than the South African average.
Without being specifically asked about the role of her university she says “it
was easy the time I was at university because I was printing for free the only thing
that I was paying for it was envelopes. Cos copy I was doing copy for free at the
library and printing for free so since now since I’m not working and studying I have
to pay for all these things” (lines 54- 60). Therefore, graduates do not have access to
university resources that students have access to. This helps us to understand why
graduates in the lowest socio-economic status group, and with difficulty accessing
resources, have a higher prevalence of unemployment compared to the other
employment groups as their job search is hindered by financial and resource
constraints. Furthermore, as the cost of a job application is so high Lindy says that “I
sometimes cannot get the right resources” (line 10) and “Because it’s sometimes
happen I see a post I don’t have money to go to an internet or go to post office I end
up not applying for that job.”(lines 25-27) which is a further lost opportunity cost.
This could explain why in the quantitative findings the majority of unemployed
graduates reported applying for an average of only 1-5 jobs per week.
This raises important questions around the role of the university in
supporting their graduates in finding employment, particularly poor graduates who
do not have the household resources required to apply for work such as a computer,
internet connection and fax machine. In addition to reference letters and
graduation certificate equivalents, shown in the previous theme to be assets in the
job search process, higher education institutions could provide their unemployed

81
graduates with access to newspapers, computers, the internet, photocopying and
postage services. These indicate very practical ways in which higher education
institutions could assist unemployed graduates look for work by alleviating some of
the disadvantage that poor graduates face in the job market. Interestingly, Lindy
reports using these services in the library. This points to potential overlap in career
resource centers’ and library services. Possibly better articulation of career
resource centers’ services is required to avoid duplication of services, or perhaps
better divergence of library and career resource center services.
This extract also raises concerns around the high cost of applying for a job
and the resource intense application process outlined by graduate recruiters.
Graduate recruiters too could provide other alternatives to applying for work which
are less resource intensive and therefore less discriminatory to poor graduates. For
example, recruiters could consider application process that require only a cell phone
or they provide certain graduates with printed application documents and include a
pre-paid postage envelope.
Lastly, this extract indicates that along with access to newspapers, computer
and the internet, survey research should include questions around access to
transport, and distance to a post office. These are measures of ‘rurlaness’ that could
be understood better with regards to their impact of one’s ability to look for work.
The following three extracts are similar to the one above. They show that a
job search requires numerous resources, most of which are not easily accessible to
poor graduates. They differ from the one above in the cost of a job search and the
conditional effects that money can have on conducting a job search.

Extract 7: Cost of a job search and family support

1 Kim: Ok. Um. How many jobs do you think you applied for between-
2 after you graduated and when you got your internship?
3 Pet: Yo yo yo yo as many as I could. I was spending
4 almost every day on the internet, spending everyday looking
5 at the newspaper buying the newspaper all the ((inaudible))
6 that is advertising the post or the the internships and
7 other things I can’t- even now a person can call me for for
8 the interviews ne I wouldn’t even remember, wouldn’t really
9 remember, “did I really apply for for for this job or what?”

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((Some irrelevant conversation missing))
10 Kim: Ja. Ok when you use the internet to look, where did you
11 use the internet?
12 Pet: Ah you are talking about eh venue?
13 Kim: Yes
14 Pet: Aah I started at school ja using the internet at school then
15 the time I was out there ah ah from school back at home I
16 was I was going to to town=
17 Kim: Ja
18 Pet: =to the eh internet café
19 Kim: Ja
20 Pet: And search in the internet for for for the job and stuff
21 Kim: Ok so- and how much would you pay to get to the internet
22 café and how much did you pay for the internet?
23 Pet: Eh to to get to that ah destination ma I was paying, return=
24 Kim: Ja
25 Pet: =a return would be eighty rands and then just to use that
26 internet
27 Kim: Are you saying one eight or eight zero?
28 Pet: Eight zero
29 Kim: So forty rand there=
30 Pet: Eight zero
31 Kim: =forty rand back?
32 Pet: Yes. Ja forty rands going and forty rands coming back
33 Kim: Shew
34 Pet: That’s how far it was
35 Kim: And then how much did it cost to use the internet?
36 Pet: Ah by estimation it was plus minus fifty rands
37 Kim: Ok so how many hours does that allow you?
38 Pet: Aah close to two or three ja
40 Kim: Ok ok
41 Pet: Ja
42 Kim: So I mean that’s very very expensive to get-
43 Pet: Very expensive ma’am that’s why I’m saying that that period
44 it was very very very much frustrating
45 Kim: Ja
46 Pet: I was losing money for nothing. Applying applying not
47 getting a job nothing eish eish eish
48 Kim: Who was paying for you to do this?
49 Pet: Eh I was I was having the support from my mother and also

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50 from my dad
51 Kim: Ok
52 Pet: Sometimes from my brother when he has something you know
53 Kim: Ja
54 Pet: Yes

This extract explains why access to the internet is an important determinant of

graduate unemployment, as found in the survey results. It also indicates the
importance of transport as a resource and the high cost unemployed graduates can
spend on transport alone. Peter says “Eh to to get to that ah destination ma I was
paying, return- a return would be eighty rands and then just to use that internet”
(lines 24-26), therefore, urban unemployment may be higher due to transport costs.
In addition to this he says “Ah by estimation it was plus minus fifty rands” (line 36) to
use the internet. While Lindy complained about the cost of her job search we see
that it can be far more for other applicants who live further from an internet café.
Peter doesn’t seem to consider his job search effective or useful when he says he
was “losing money for nothing” (line 46).
As with Lindy, Peter also used the internet at university while he was a
student there, but now he has to travel to town to use the internet (lines 14-18).
Therefore the universities supply much needed resources to current students but
not to their graduates, implying that their role ends once the student leaves the
university. It also suggests that higher education institutions that hold graduate fairs
are assisting their students find employment by eliminating transport costs as the
employers come to the university rather than the students going to the employer,
but these transport costs become a debilitating factor in the graduates job search
once they have graduated from their higher education institution. Graduate
employers should be aware that their online application processes bear heavy costs,
especially for those living far from an internet café, and in this regard online
recruitment processes are often unaffordable to poor graduates, thereby driving a
cycle of poverty whereby poor graduate are unable to apply for these jobs and as a
result less likely to secure employment.
Lastly, his family funds his job search and if we assume that his parents are
employed, as is his brother, this is evidence of the supportive financial role

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employed family members play and “reiterates the importance of household
attachment to the labour market” (Schoer et al., 2012) for graduates. Unfortunately
the role of family was not well covered in the survey and future quantitative
research should ask more specific questions around the type and magnitude of
support offered by family members to job seekers.
During Grade 12 Nomsa, in the following extract, was given a bursary to study
a three-year marketing diploma. Since graduating she has done various contractual
jobs, all unrelated to marketing, and has not held a permanent position. She
mentioned having received good marks for her diploma and being a hard worker
both whilst studying and currently while looking for a job.

Extract 8: Resources dictate job search

1 Kim: Like ja think of the last year, what is your most typical
2 day?
3 Nom: With me, ok ok I I wake up every day and I’ve got a little
4 sister she’s eight years old and I accompany her to school,
5 when I was not working in this firm, and I accompany her to
6 school and then I come back when I do have the money in that
7 week I’ll buy a newspaper come back at home and clean after
8 cleaning I’ll browse through the newspaper and read it and
9 try to find a job circling everywhere. I will call maybe the
10 following day I’ll start calling those numbers and then
11 sometimes I borrow a laptop from my aunt’s daughters but
12 sometimes she doesn’t give me. When I borrow the laptop
13 then I’ll use it the whole day because it’s not mine
14 obviously and other days I’ll go to the internet café, it’s
15 costly it’s ten rand per hour so I don’t have money always
16 but when I do have a fifty rand I’ll go to the internet café
17 maybe for three hours and then the other twenty rand will be
18 for food while I’m there. That’s a typical day for me
19 Kim: Ok
What stands out in this extract is the conditional nature of Nomsa’s job search. She
says “when I do have the money in that week I’ll buy a newspaper” (lines 6-7), “when
I borrow the laptop then I’ll use it the whole day because it’s not mine” (lines 12-13)
and “when I do have a fifty rand I’ll go to the internet café” (line 16). Nomsa can
only apply for jobs when she has money or when she can borrow the laptop.

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Therefore, Peter’s job search is costly but not necessarily restricted because he has
financial support from his family. On the other hand, Lindy and Nomsa’s job search
is expensive and in addition to this it is restricted to when they have the required
resources. This shows that financial constraints have a differing impact on low socio-
economic status graduates’ job search and that its impact is more severe for some
than for others.
Additionally, family resources influence family responsibility and in Nomsa’s
example her responsibilities extend to helping her little sister and cleaning the
house. This provides evidence of the multifaceted nature of the relationship
between family resources and job seekers ability to look for work. Unfortunately
current unemployment research, including this research survey, does not explore
this relationship sufficiently. Therefore, any intervention aimed at either measuring
the relationship between family resources and employability or at assisting poor
graduates in their job search should acknowledge the relationship between family
responsibilities and family resources.
The following extract is taken from Sibusiso’s interview. He finished Grade 12
in 2001 and did a certificate in business administration in 2002. Thereafter he
studied a BCom majoring in insurance and risk management and marketing at the
University of the Witwatersrand. Since graduating in 2010, he has held three part-
time jobs. Besides being unemployed in between these positions, he has been
unemployed and looking for work for the past three months. Prior to the extract he
has spoken about how he normally applies for jobs, using newspapers and the
internet, and that he finds the job application process very expensive.

Extract 9: The cost of faxing

1 Sib: Most companies if you send your CV they want you to fax
2 stuff and faxing is hell of expensive and you need internet
3 café, money, it’s a whole lot of factors because you don’t
4 have your own like internet at home or anything like that so
5 it becomes quite problematic when you’re not bringing in
6 anything yet you need money to you know- apply and do a
7 whole lot of things
8 Kim: Ja and so how did you get money to or ah- how did you look
9 for a job, where did you use the internet and how did you

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10 get money to post your CV and things like that?
11 Sib: Ja a friend of mine borrowed me his modem and I managed to
12 scrambled ah some data money that I used to apply everyday
13 but ah any response that came back asking me to fax stuff I
14 just ignored cos ah I faxed once and it cost me like sixty
15 five rand to fax everything they wanted, and up to this day
16 they didn’t- they still haven’t responded
17 Kim: Ok so once they said in their application “Can you fax
18 something” then you just left it?
19 Sib: Ja
20 Kim: So can you say that part of the problem with looking for a
21 job is the expense and the process of applying?
22 Sib: Ja definitely. If I apply to a company via email I expect
23 them to respond via email and ask for my documents via email
24 rather than having to ask me to fax stuff
25 Kim: Ja
I have chosen this extract to highlight a particular conundrum which poor graduates
face. That is, throughout the interviews these graduates reported that they look for
jobs in the newspaper because it is easy to get a newspaper and unlike the internet
they don’t pay for the amount of time they have access to it. Therefore they can
read it carefully, circling the jobs to which they will apply, and tailor their application
to the job advertised. In addition to looking for jobs in the newspaper, others
reported using the internet on their phone to apply as it eliminates the cost of
travelling to an internet café. In reviewing the jobs advertised in newspapers, I see
that probably the majority of the positions advertised are public sector/government
jobs. Having applied for a number of government jobs myself I am aware of what
the application process can be. Commonly the application process entails printing
out the forms they provide on their website, completing these forms, scanning them,
and faxing them together with one’s academic record, CV and copy of your identity
document.
The conundrum is that the jobs adverts which are cheap to access, namely
those in the newspaper, can be the most expensive to apply for. Unemployed
graduates, who do not have access to computers and the internet, can either
experience an expensive process is accessing job adverts by paying the costs
associated with traveling to an internet café and paying for the internet, paying for
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data on their phones or traveling to companies and applying door-to-door, or they
can experience this expense later when they apply to jobs accessed fairly cheaply in
the newspaper but that require printing, scanning and faxing of numerous forms.
This extract therefore raises unique problems poor graduates face in their job
search namely the compatibility of various advertising and application options and
their viability for poor graduates. As seen with the example of strikes resulting in a
bad reputation for the whole university, here we see another factor, which is outside
of graduates’ control but that affects them adversely. These point to the necessity
for higher education career services to extend their scope of practice beyond
counseling and guidance services to address issues outside of the student or
graduates control and more within the graduate employer’s control. Higher
education career services, together with graduate employers, could review various
job application processes, with the intention to understand how the application
process is biased towards certain applicants. In the extracts we have seen that those
who do not have money, who do not have the internet at home, who pay for
photocopies and faxing themselves are most disadvantaged. These are most likely
to be graduates from families with unemployed household members and from
families who live in rural areas. So while the graduate recruitment fairs held at some
higher education institutions are very helpful in eliminating transport costs by
bringing the employers to the students, these fairs are not open to graduates, and
unless a student secures employment before they graduate, they will have to
personally bear these costs. As graduate recruiters do not host their graduate
recruitment fairs at all higher education institutions, their application process is
biased at the stage of marketing themselves to graduates as well as at the online
application stage discussed previously. Taken together, a poor graduate, who
studied at a higher education institution where graduate recruitment fairs were not
held, face dual disadvantages in the job search and application process.

4.2.3 Theme 3: Potential short-comings of higher education institutions’

career services
The extracts above have primarily focused on the cost of looking for work and how
higher education institutions’ career services and graduate employers are often not
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sensitive to the debilitating cost of looking for work for poor graduates. The extracts
have also reflected on the positive effect of graduate recruitment fairs – how these
fairs bring the graduate employers to the students, thereby eliminating the transport
cost associated with the student visiting the potential employers.
The following extract shows a different way that higher education career
services can fall short in providing services to students and graduates, and provides
further evidence for rethinking the role of higher education institutions in assisting
their graduates secure employment. The extract is taken from earlier on in
Sibusiso’s interview.

Extract 10: Graduate recruitment fairs fall short

1 Kim: Um if you think about your university, Wits University, how-
2 did they help you in any way to prepare- to look for a job?
3 Sib: Not necessarily they just brought companies over and they
4 offer grad programs and once you’re in none of those
5 programs, you’re basically on your own, they don’t prepare
6 you for that part
7 Kim: Ok so would you say that the services they offered you, that
8 graduate recruitment fair, did it- did it assist you in any
9 way?
10 Sib: No it just assisted me in getting some rejection letters and
11 ja that’s all basically and some of those programs don’t
12 actually respond
13 Kim: Ok so you found programs at the graduate recruitment fair
14 and you applied and then they never got back to you?
15 Sib: Yes
16 Kim: Ok
When asked about the assistance he received from his university in preparing for or
looking for a job, Sibusiso only refers to the graduate recruitment fair. I know that in
2010, when Sibusiso was at Wits University, that other optional career services
where available and as he makes no reference to other services offered by Wits such
as CV writing and interview skills training, it is possible he doesn’t know of these
services. Therefore, marketing of these services may be ineffective. This leads me
to the optional nature of these services and that they are offered on students’
request by making an appointment with the career counseling and development

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unit, as opposed to being part of the course curriculum. This implies that higher
education institutions perceive their career services to not be required by all
students but only those who seek help. Additionally the onus is on the student to
seek help from the career services, implying that (1) the student is more responsible
for their career prospects than their higher education institution, and (2) that all
students have equal time available to access these support services. However, this
may not be the case, for example, for students who travel far distances to and from
their higher education institution or for those with additional family responsibilities
like Nomsa (Extract 8).
Sibusiso’s disappointment in the career services his university offered is fairly
explicit here when he says “you’re basically on your own, they don’t prepare you for
that part” (line 5-6) and “[they] just assisted me in getting some rejection letters”
(line 10). This points to poor integration of the services, possibly as a result of in
their optional and non-structured nature. So while graduate recruitment fairs have
advantages for poor graduates in that they eliminate the cost of travelling to
companies and may provide opportunities for networking and establishing
connections to the labour market, they do not ensure employment and they do not
ensure authenticity of the positions the employers are offering. This is evident when
Sibusiso says “some of those programs don’t actually respond” (line 11-12). This
remark may provide an explanation for why the receipt of career guidance was
found not to be significantly related to employment status in the survey results.
In summary, the above five extracts give us insight into the high cost of a job
search for those who lack the required resources, the resources provided by higher
education institutions that are available to students but not to graduates, the
varying resources offered (or not offered) by family members to the graduates for
their job search, and shortcoming of higher education career services namely that
given their optional nature they are unknown to students and that career fairs can
be ineffective. By helping us understand how and why money is important at
various levels and times in students’ and graduates’ lives and by highlighting gaps in
the career services offered by higher education institutions, these extracts give some
explanation of the survey results, specifically why access to resources and socio-

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economic status are important determinants of graduate unemployment and
conversely why career guidance was found to be insignificantly associated with
graduate unemployment.
To conclude the second and third themes I summarise the following key
questions: Can graduate employers’ applications processes be changed to make the
process less resource intensive and biased against poor graduates? How can the
effectiveness of higher education institutions’ career services, such as career
guidance and graduate recruitment fairs, be measured? Are these career services
equally accessible to all students? And could there be benefit in providing
compulsory career services to students rather than the current optional nature?

4.2.4 Theme 4: Discriminatory recruitment practices

In the last group of extracts, the high cost of looking for work becomes very clear
and a new aspect of the cost of looking for work is revealed. Extract 11 introduces a
new factor to the study, namely the presence of bribery. It also elaborates on the
role of family and friends and the use of connections in recruitment. The extract
occurred within the concluding minutes of Peter’s interview. This, together with the
following five extracts cover the last theme to be explored in this report. The theme
discusses common recruitment practices, and as most of these practices are unfair
for certain groups of graduates they are labelled as discriminatory.

Extract 11: Bribery and networking in recruitment

1 Kim: Ok. Umm I don’t have any more questions for you. Um is there
2 anything else that you could tell me that would maybe help
3 me with my study to understand why so many young people are
4 unemployed?
5 Pet: Ah ma’am we can talk the whole day ne
6 Kim: ((laughs))Ja
((Irrelevant conversation missing))
7 Pet: The municipalities are doing wrong they are not doing
8 anything for those people they- eh people in the
9 municipalities if you can count or if you can also do that
10 research about the municipalities of South Africa (I’m not
11 saying) all of it- in South Africa if you can count the

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12 people that are unqualified and sitting at the offices, they
13 are more than people who are qualified.
14 Kim: Ja but how do you think they get this job if they’re
15 unqualified?
16 Pet: Hai man! ah sorry sorry ma’am. It is all about eh I think
17 the connections you- we we all know about this connections.
18 We can’t run away from it and we can’t hide it
19 Kim: What do you mean it’s about connections?
20 Pet: Eh like let’s say I know you
21 Kim: Mhm
22 Pet: You are working at the municipality, maybe you are a manager
23 Kim: Mhm
24 Pet: I I I don’t have qualification and there is a a a vacant
25 post
26 Kim: Ja
27 Pet: Ja at the municipality I’m just going to talk to you and say
28 “Ai can you eh eh make a plan that I I can be here at this
29 office and working?”
30 Kim: Ja
31 Pet: Wouldn’t even think twice just because you know me or maybe
32 even some bribes. Bribes are there. It is it is there it is
33 happening=
34 Kim: Ja
35 Pet: =in our daily lives so this is also part of the things that
36 discourages us, even there was this- there is this person
37 that I know, he is not qualified to be maybe an IT officer
38 Kim: Ja
39 Pet: Then I applied. He applied.
40 Kim: Ok
41 Pet: What did they do? They put him on that office. Nothing, they
42 just reject me, they don’t even call me or tell me that no
43 I’m unlucky I’m not selected
44 Kim: But how did he get it? What did he do?
45 Pet: Ai that’s the thing that I’m asking myself now. And I’m
46 still going to be asking myself each and every day “How
47 come? How come?” You see?
48 Kim: Ja and you think maybe he bribed someone or maybe he’s got
49 connections
50 Pet: Yes. Yes because of those connections that I was telling you
51 about. They do happen.

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52 Kim: Ja
53 Pet: They are there
54 Kim: Ok
55 Pet: It it- so me, if I had a connection too by then I’d be
56 talking another story telling you “No I have a job, I have a
57 nice job” Eh eh but now I’m struggling to have a nice job
58 because I don’t have connections. It’s just me and my
59 qualifications

Peter talks about the use of connections as a widely known and used recruitment
strategy. He says “It is all about eh I think the connections you- we we all know
about this connections. We can’t run away from it and we can’t hide it” (lines 16-18).
This concurs with literature that identifies networking as the most effective job
searching strategy (Bernstein, 2010; Rankin et al., 2007; Schoer et al., 2012;
Wittenberg, 2002). He reiterates this when talking about bribes when he says
“Bribes are there. It is it is there it is happening in our daily lives” (lines 32-35). In
addition to the pervasiveness of bribery and using connections to find a job, he also
talks about the normality of these behaviors in saying “Wouldn’t even think twice”
(lines 31). In closing he says “if I had a connection too by then I’d be talking another
story telling you “No I have a job, I have a nice job” Eh eh but now I’m struggling to
have a nice job because I don’t have connections. It’s just me and my qualifications”
(lines 55-59). This shows that he is certain that if he had connections he would be
employed, but even though he seems certain that he would have a job if he had
connections, he refers to the illusive nature of how this would actually happen when
he says “I’m still going to be asking myself each and every day “How come? How
come?” You see?” (lines 44-47).
What is interesting about his description of connections is he says “I don’t
have the qualification” (line 24) indicating that he may be referring to something
more ominous than using connections to secure employment as he implies that the
person is not qualified for the job. Further on he says “because you know me” (line
31) but he does not describe the nature of this relationship. With caution I infer that
Peter may be referring to nepotism and I do so without treating nepotism as being
either good or bad. While it may be worthwhile to consider moral and legal
considerations regarding nepotism, “the general industrial-organisational

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psychologists view is that any policy relating to recruitment, hiring, or promotion of
individuals should be based on the qualifications to perform the job (Gutman, 2012,
p.12).
This transcript explains another way how socio-economic status is related to
unemployment status and illuminates networking/nepotism as a common
recruitment strategy. Therefore poverty recurs for people with unemployed family
members firstly because they don’t have the resources required to look for work and
secondly because they have fewer connections to the labour market. In hindsight,
my survey should have gone to greater lengths to understand how
employed/unemployed family members and friends influence graduates’ job search
process and employment prospects to facilitate deeper understanding of these
findings.
Lastly, as Peter says “they don’t even call me or tell me that no I’m unlucky
I’m not selected” (lines 42-43) he is telling us that because he does not receive
feedback from graduate recruiters he is unsure how the recruitment process works
and why his application is unsuccessful. Therefore graduate recruiters are adding to
the illusive nature of recruitment through their lack of feedback to applicants. Both
higher education career services and graduate recruiters could play a role in
ensuring timeous and accurate feedback is given to applicants. This would provide
clarity on the recruitment process and allow applicants to improve their application,
and future job prospects, by the honest and constructive feedback they could
receive. It would also provide a ‘return on investment’ for the money graduates
spend on job applications.
In the following extract Lindy has been saying that if she could return to
university she would study radiography as intended, and not interpretation and
translation as she has done. She believes that getting a job in radiography would be
easier because she sees lots of adverts, particularly in the newspaper and on notice
boards, for jobs in radiography. These jobs that she sees are mostly in government
departments.

Extract 12: Poor families can’t afford to pay bribes

1 Kim: Ok and besides the course is there anything else that you

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2 think makes it more difficult for you to find a job?
3 Lin: Yes another thing is that when you like apply=
4 Kim: Mhm
5 Lin: =people tend to look at your CV and like it’s depends on who
6 you know. You have to know people to get a job in other
7 places
8 Kim: Ok
9 Lin: If you just nobody and you know nobody you can’t get a job
10 Kim: Ok
11 Lin: Some places you do have to bribe in order to get a job so
12 for us it is difficult for us who come from a poor families
13 to get that money to bribe people to get a job
14 Kim: Ja have you-
15 Lin: Government ((inaudible)) so you have to know people=
16 Kim: Ok I hear-
17 Lin: =in order to get a job
18 Kim: Can you tell me about your experiences that you’ve had with
19 umm having to know people or having to bribe people?
20 Lin: Yes since you said my my information is confidential
21 Kim: Yes
22 Lin: I will tell you. Ok I once get a call from I’m not sure
23 whether the department of- it was one of the government
24 departments
25 Kim: Ok
26 Lin: Where they do- where I got a call- a person was calling me
27 he said “If you can give me five thousand rand you can get
28 this job”
29 Kim: Yo!
30 Lin: But then I didn’t have that money since I’m not working. I
31 told him that “What if you give me a job then I work then I
32 pay you I pay you once I got paid?” he said he want the five
33 thousand now or else I’m not going to get this job then
34 that’s why- that’s how I lost my that job
35 Kim: Ja. Had you applied for that job?
36 Lin: Yes I did
((Some repetitive conversation missing))
37 Lin: So
38 Kim: Shew it’s terrible
39 Lin: I didn’t have the money that’s ho- why I lost the job. I

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40 think I was qualified for the job so because I didn’t have
41 the money for bribe that’s why I didn’t get the job
In the previous extract Peter referred to the pervasiveness and normality of bribery
and using connections in recruitment. Here, Lindy talks about the same behaviours
and she doesn’t seem to condemn the behavior, possibly indicating that it is a
common recruitment practice. Her perceived normality of this behavior is evident
both when she says “Some places you do have to bribe in order to get a job” (line 11)
and when she offers information around how she tried to negotiate the bribe.
Lindy says that another difficulty in her job search is that “it’s depends on
who you know. You have to know people to get a job in other places” (lines 5-7). As
with Peter’s example above, it is unclear whether she is referring to ‘who you know’
as a networking strategy or possibly some form of nepotism, however, before Lindy
gives details of how she was bribed she says “since you said my my information is
confidential I will tell you.” (lines 20-22) implying that there is some sort of secrecy
around this kind of practice. Nevertheless, the extent to which the bribe and having
connections are interrelated needs to be established and understood in greater
detail. This is an area for further research.
Moleke (2003, 2005) reported that Black people are employed primarily in
the public sector, whereas Whites are mostly employed in the private sector. As
Lindy explicitly says that the behaviors to which she is referring occurs in
government (line 15), it suggests that further research is required to understand the
connection between preferred advertising avenue (for example newspaper versus
internet), the application process (for example emailing versus faxing documents)
and recruitment practices (for example the importance of connections and bribery).
There may be systematic ways in which poor graduates are disadvantaged from the
advertising avenue, through application and into recruitment practices.
In closing her story she says “I didn’t have the money that’s ho- why I lost the
job.” (line 39) indicating that in her mind there is no doubt that she would have got
the job had she been able to afford the bribe. She shows that in her experience
employment is not based on education but rather one’s ability to bribe a recruiter
and based on connections (lines 5-6). Both ability to pay a bribe and connections to
the labour market are not within the individual graduate’s control and they provide
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reason for studying graduate unemployment from a holistic perspective, far beyond
simply understanding characteristics of the individual. It is clear from this extract
that graduate recruiters play a significant role as gatekeepers in the recruitment
process.
The following extract occurs shortly after the one above in which Lindy talks
about being asked for a bribe and her inability to pay the bribe because she comes
from a poor family.

Extract 13: Bribe for in-service learning

1 Kim: Do you have other experiences like this or do your friends
2 have they had experiences like this?
3 Lin: Yes they did
4 Kim: And can you tell me about them?
5 Lin: Yes. One of my friends=
6 Kim: Mhm
7 Lin: =who in like two thousand and eight she was looking for an
8 in-service training, then she got to the Department of
9 Justice, she went there and the manager told her that he has
10 post who is looking for people who are qualified for
11 translation and interpretation, so he is willing to give her
12 this position but then she must bribe in order for her to
13 get the the position
14 Kim: Ja and did he say how much?
15 Lin: No she didn’t because at school we were told about
16 ((inaudible)) she was still doing an in-service training, he
17 said she is going to pay him for the position, she is no
18 longer going to do the in-service training
19 Kim: Ja
20 Lin: So the lady decide not to take it and report it at school
21 Kim: Ja. Why do you think she didn’t report this to school?
22 Lin: Ai I don’t know
23 Kim: So did she do her in-service training there al- had she
24 started her in-service training or was she still going to
25 start?
26 Lin: She was about to start and they get her another one at
27 school
28 Kim: Ok so she decided she is not going to bribe them she’ll
29 rather take the other one?
30 Lin: Yes
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This extract is interesting in that, while in Extract 12 Lindy is referring to a bribe
proposition that took place at a time when she had already graduated (and therefore
was not directly connected to the higher education institution), this extract refers to
a bribe being offered to a current student of the higher education institution for her
in-service learning, which is a subject within the diploma course. Therefore, this
raises interesting questions around the role of the higher education institution in
ensuring fair recruitment of their students into in-service learning, whereas prior to
this we have only considered recruitment of graduates. Questions arising from this
extract are; who is responsible for ensuring fair recruitment of students and/or
graduates; are there processes are in place for students or graduates to report unfair
recruitment practices; what are the roles of the higher education institution, the
recruiter and the student in this scenario, and what power do these respective roles
possess; and, what are the effects of unfair student and graduate recruitment
practices? All of these questions provide areas where further research would add to
our understanding of graduate unemployment in South Africa.
Below, Nomsa talks about her experience of applying for a government
nursing learnership, following conversation on bribery in recruitment. In this
interview, as well as in the previous interviews, bribery and the use of connections
was brought up by the graduate being interviewed and not by me, the interviewer.

Extract 14: Bribe or application fee?

1 Nom: Also in the government department in Orlando I know that,
2 I’ve experienced it there was this learner- nursing
3 learnership that was being advertised when-
4 Kim: In the newspaper?
5 Nom: In the newspaper, it was a government learnership. I went
6 there, I went to town first I went there, tried to apply
7 there but they said “We’ve got, in Soweto we’ve got our
8 Department so you need to go back to Soweto”. I went
9 to Orlando when we got there they gave us like a small
10 ticket that has their stamp and a number and then also a
11 date when you should come because they said we we’re too
12 many. When that date came I went to Orlando again and then
13 they told us about the fifty rands that we need to pay in

98
14 order for us to write the test. They said “Yes you’ve got a
15 C symbol in English and it’s higher grade” and then they
16 checked my certificate and then they told me they want fifty
17 rands for us to write the test so because I didn’t have that
18 money and because I told myself that I also won’t pay for a
19 job, if it’s not meant for me it’s not meant for me but I
20 won’t give a person money just to find a job. So we went
21 home we went back because I didn’t have money
22 Kim: And would you consider reporting that or not?
23 Nom: No because if you’re going to go back with the police there
24 they’re going to ask you “Who told you that?” then they’re
25 going to make a fool of you. They going to go round and
26 round and round and round and then you won’t find any help
While in the previous extracts the bribe proposition appears to be illegal, in this
extract Nomsa is being asked for money to write an application test and it is unclear
whether she is in fact being bribed or not. It is possible that some graduates are
sensitive to the presence of bribery in recruitment and that anytime they are asked
for money they assume it is a bribe. Alternatively, it is possible that bribery takes on
quite sophisticated guises and that they are in fact very pervasive in graduate
recruitment. Either way, this extract shows again that poor graduates are often
unable to pay fees relating to recruitment and are therefore impeded in their job
search. When asked whether she would consider reporting the bribe, Nomsa says
“they’re going to ask you “Who told you that?” then they’re going to make a fool of
you” (lines 24-25). This alludes to her vulnerable position in that she can easily be
made a fool of. Again, it is unclear what higher education institutions’ role in
ensuring fair graduate recruitment practice is and who should be responsible for
assisting graduates in difficult situations as the one described here. This is further
evidence that graduate recruitment practices should be monitored and governed in
a way that empowers students and graduates, rather than leaving them vulnerable.
In order for this to be done, the roles and role-players need to be clearly articulated
and the power dynamic assessed. To my knowledge this has not been studied.
The following extract, from Thembi’s interview, gives an example of a
different way that bribery can occur. Thembi graduated with a national diploma in
electrical engineering in April 2012. She was unemployed for six months and

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recently received a learnership position. Since being asked about the difficulties she
faces when looking for work she has hinted at the presence of bribery in recruitment
but been reluctant to talk about it. Here I ask her explicitly about bribery.

Extract 15: Negotiating the bribe

1 Kim: Can you tell me of an example, it doesn’t have to have
2 happened to you it can have happened to a friend but how it-
3 how a bribe would have worked?
4 The: Ah what I’ve heard is that ah- you come into- they usually
5 ah- you talk to someone in the company who’s in HR then they
6 shortlist you for that position, they even give you the
7 questions, and then they they give this ah- you have to pay
8 a certain installment every month once you’re in that
9 position, two thousand or five thousand depending on how
10 much you’re going to be earning, how much the HR people are
11 going to be negotiating for you in that process
12 Kim: So they give you the interview questions so that you can do
13 well in the interview?
14 The: Ja so you can do well in the interview because most
15 companies most decisions lie with the managers, and the
16 more- ah- HR- so they try to push you as their person so
17 that ah- even the manager disagrees on the- you you lack
18 something he wants in a person, maybe you lack drive ah you
19 can answer the questions but he doesn’t see potential for
20 you beyond your answers that you’ve given in the interview
21 so ah he he he’s kind of pushed you into a corner because
22 you’ve scored high on the questions that he has set up for
23 you
24 Kim: Ja
25 The: Ja
26 Kim: And the- you say- so every single month if you get the job
27 you have to pay a percentage of your salary to this person?
28 The: Ja that’s how most bribes work or some just put a lump sum
29 to ensure that you get the the- get into the interview, then
30 you pass the interview, then afterwards you pay another lump
31 sum
32 Kim: Ok. So you give them one set of money to get the interview
33 questions and then another set of money if you get the job?
34 The: Ja

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35 Kim: So even if you are not successful in the interview you still
36 have paid some money?
37 The: Ja or do- you still have gone through the process of paying
38 them money
In her interview Thembi, like Lindy, appeared reluctant to share information around
bribery. However, she had fairly detailed information of how bribery can occur
giving evidence that it is something she is familiar with and therefore possibly quite
common, at least among the participants I interviewed. Thembi shares an example
of how bribery can occur that raises questions around who drives the bribery in the
company. She says that usually HR negotiates the bribe with the applicant although
they are not the ones who make the final employment decision. Therefore in her
experience, being employed is not only a result of ability to pay a bribe as we heard
previously in Lindy’s interview but a combination of ability to pay a bribe, success in
the interview process and based on the job requirements. It is remarkable that the
price of the bribe in this example is given as R2000 or R5000. This large sum
required would immediately be unattainable for very poor graduates and therefore
the possibility of securing the job, let alone the interview questions, would be near
impossible for them. Secondly, this example shows how even using bribery in the
job application process can be unsuccessful. This is shown when Thembi confirms
that even if you don’t get the job you have “still have gone through the process of
paying them money” (lines 37-38). Together these extracts provide strong evidence
for expanding our understanding of graduate unemployment by studying exactly
how networks develop and operate, especially given that networks are the most
common way for graduates to secure employment (Schoer, et al. 2012).
Lastly, I now move away from looking at bribery in recruitment to the use of
connections. These last extract, along with Extract 11, refer to networking or
possibly nepotism. All together, these extracts provide strong evidence for the
presence of nepotism and bribery in graduate recruitment, which to my knowledge
this has not been studied at all, let alone with reference to the role of higher
education. They also elaborate on our understanding of the relationship between
resources (both financial resources and networks) and the job search process, found
in the survey to be an important determinant of graduates employment status.

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Extract 16: Securing a job through family before graduation
1 Kim: Ok. Umm you said that either you need to bribe someone to
2 get a job or you need to know someone?
3 Lin: Know somebody yes. If you don’t know anybody in government
4 sector it’s quite difficult to get a job unless there are so
5 many people who are wanted for that position that’s how you
6 gonna get a job
7 Kim: Ok
8 Lin: If there’s only one position that requires one person to
9 work, even if you are qualified for that position you won’t
10 be- you you won’t get the job because we like- I used to
11 apply for position at this government department that I’m
12 qualified for, as interpreters
13 Kim: Ok
14 Lin: So the post was saying it wanted grade twelve or diploma in
15 translation and interpretation. I’ve got a BTech but then I
16 wouldn’t even have a call from them calling me saying “I
17 should come for an interview”
18 Kim: Ok so what type of-
19 Lin: It’s like that even they didn’t get my CV when I apply so I
20 don’t know what exactly is like going on because we like
21 going to apply maybe five of us with the same qualification
22 but nobody’s gonna get a call from them, (I’ve seen) people
23 calling for an interview
24 Kim: What type of person do you think will get the job then?
25 Lin: I think the person they know, they used to take from their
26 families or their friends or so
27 Kim: Ja have you had an experience like this where somebody who’s
28 a family member or a friend has you know has got a job?
29 Lin: Yes
30 Kim: Ok tell me about it
31 Lin: There is this guy who who who we- were at the same school we
32 were also studying. He was like “I know that at the end of
33 this I’m going to get the job. I’m just doing this just to
34 get a qualification so that people won’t say that I’m not
35 qualified at the end of the day”. He knows everything
36 that’s- where he is going to work and everything then after
37 we graduated he went and started working till now he is
38 also, he is working

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39 Kim: So he knew before he started studying already that someone
40 would give him a job there?
41 Lin: Yes
42 Kim: And was this a family person or was this a friend?
43 Lin: A family person
44 Kim: Ok. Shew
In Extract 11 Peter spoke about the certainty of getting a job if he had connections.
This extract builds on our understanding of connections as Lindy says “I think the
person they know, they used to take from their families or their friends” (lines 25-
26). In these examples, it is very difficult to distinguish networking from nepotism
but given that there is some secrecy in reporting this behavior, this implies that
there may be something suspicious occurring. Alternatively it is possible that she is
describing a form of networking, commonly used in recruitment because of its cost
effectiveness, and that the student referred to above had other legitimate reasons
for being given a job upon graduation. Therefore the use of networks was very
beneficial for this student and had positive outcomes.
Either way, these extracts highlight the vague distinction between
networking as an effective job search strategy and nepotism as an illegal activity and
also highlights the importance of attachment to the labour force, whether it be
though family or friends in securing a job. This indicates the importance of first
entry into the labour market as an important stepping stone, as once in employment
a person can begin to build a network that is attached to the labour market. This
attachment to the labour market through family and friends is another aspect of
family resources spoken about in the first group of extracts. It underscores the
importance of studying family resources in a holistic and multifaceted way, beyond
socio-economic status. Together the qualitative findings reiterate the necessity to
understand graduate unemployment in context of South Africa’s apartheid past,
higher education institution’s services and graduate recruitment practices.
Furthermore, the findings point to numerous areas where further study is required
to explain the survey results more fully.

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 Chapter 5: Discussion and conclusion

5.1 Discussion
My discussion highlights three key findings in this research, and explores these
findings in terms of their implications for research methodology, theory and policy
relating to graduate unemployment. Briefly the key findings are (1) the unique
vulnerabilities that poor graduates face and the recurrent nature of poverty, (2) the
assumptions of higher education institutions’ career services, and (3) the presence of
discriminatory recruitment practices and how these negatively affect poor graduates
in particular. Throughout the discussion I raise areas for further research.

5.1.1 Implications for research methodology

I first reflect on research methodology in the field of gradate unemployment and
then on this research specifically. As reported by Koen (2006), most evident when
reviewing the literature is the lack of definitions of the concepts used in the study of
graduate unemployment. As discussed in the literature review, often researchers do
not define the term graduate and readers are left to interpret this through the
sample used. In my opinion, researchers’ definition of the term should at least refer
to where the qualification was obtained (e.g. at a public or private higher education
institution) and whether the qualification referred to is one of the person’s
qualifications or the highest qualification (i.e. does humanities graduate refer to all
people who have studied humanities or only those whose highest qualification is in
humanities).
Regarding the understanding of and definition of employment status,
currently there is insufficient depth of understanding of different unemployment
types and the impact of these types on peoples livelihoods. Problems in defining
unemployment relate to previous concerns around the StatsSA’s definitions of
unemployment (Kingdom & Knight, 2000a), underemployment as a guise of
unemployment (Bernstein, 2010) and the problematic use of mutually exclusive
categories (Cosser & Sehlola, 2009). A more nuanced definition of unemployment,
which allows for multiple categories, an overlap of categories and possibly relative
severity of these categories would be beneficial.

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 My research went a small way in addressing this by categorising the
unemployed as those who are unemployed and looking for work and those who are
unemployed and not looking for work, however these are not sufficient. For
example, this research’s survey should have included an item whereby participants
who indicated that they were unemployed and not looking for work indicated why
they were not looking for work. This would have helped categorise employment
status more usefully. Additionally this survey should have allowed participants to
select more than one category of employment. Not only would a more nuanced and
consistently used definition of unemployment be beneficial, but so too would a scale
of the severity of unemployment. For example, it is clear that the impact of
unemployment is more severe for some graduates, and for their families, than for
others. Understanding different levels of severity would, among other things, aid
higher education institutions’ career services and other services provided by various
stakeholders, in prioritising assistance to groups within the unemployed population.
Beyond difficulties in defining the terms graduate and unemployment, there
are other important concepts that should be explicitly defined among researchers.
To note a few these include the concepts of poverty, resources, career services and
nepotism.
To a large extent current graduate unemployment research replicates
previous methodologies and often result in confirmation of findings with little
emergence of new findings and areas for study (Koen, 2006). I concur with Koen in
his identification of the following trends in graduate unemployment studies;
conceptual overlap, reliance on surveys, the study of similar variables and lack of
theoretical frameworks.
Reflecting on this research, methodologically I aimed for complementarity;
that is to measure overlapping but also different facets of the same phenomena
(Green et al., 1989) and significant enhancement; facilitating thickness and richness
of data (Collins, et al., 2006). I believe that as the research was executed as planned,
and that the research questions justified a mixed methods design that both of these
design aims were met. Complementarity was achieved through the more elaborate
and deep understanding gained specifically relating to the role of race, socio-

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economic status and resources in relation to graduate unemployment.
Enhancement was achieved through the discussions on the cost of looking for a job,
the role of connections and bribery in recruitment, and the role of higher education
institutions’ in the employment of their gradutes. Additionally the results allowed
for inferences to be made on the quantitative and qualitative components
separately as well as inferences based equally on these two sets of findings.
A critique of the method is that the quantitative findings confirmed to a large
extent what other quantitative research had already found, with a few exceptions.
The most notable exception, in my opinion, is that race, socio-economic status and
access to resources only explained 12.8% of the variance in employment status.
Most research in the field is largely descriptive and doesn’t report multivariate
analysis, which can inflate the importance of individual demographic and
educational variables. Therefore including multivariate analysis was valuable. Also
notable, is the statistically non-significant role of career guidance in employment
status. This raised questions regarding higher education institutions’ role is
increasing the employability of their graduates as their current services are based on
career guidance and skills training.
My concern with the survey questionnaire was that often the questions
stopped short of the valuable information, allowing for only superficial analysis and
inhibiting deep understanding of the phenomena. For example, the role of
employed and unemployed family members didn’t extend to questions around
networking and attachment to the labour market, making it difficult to link the
survey results with the interview findings and inhibiting integration of the results.
Similarly, in the survey the role of resources did not extend beyond the presence or
absence of certain resources into, for example, the cost of resources and their
importance in conducting a job search, thereby adding little to current literature. In
this sense the survey possibly covered too many variables at a superficial level and
would have been better off looking at fewer variables in more depth. With this said,
it was important to confirm results found in previous literature given the recent
changes in the South Africa after apartheid and specifically in the higher education
landscape.

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 In addition to the results obtained, the survey was used as a sampling
strategy for the interviews. The interview results led to criterion sampling based on
the respondents’ race and socio-economic status with Black graduates from the
lowest socio-economic status group being selected. To a small extent this was a
valuable sampling strategy as the interviews revealed insight particularly pertinent
to poorer graduates. However, had I just have chosen Black graduates for the
interviews, who were extensively shown in the literature to be vulnerable to
unemployment, it is likely that given apartheid there would have been low socio-
economic participants in the sample. For this reason I do not think future research
should utilise the combining of methods for sampling purposes in the same manner
utilised in the current study.
Reaching low socio-economic status participants through email and SMS is
another critique of the method as these individual’s often do not have money to
access the internet or sufficient cell phone credit to reply to SMSes. For this reason
care should be taken when researching poor graduates given their more limited
communication via these means. It is possible that a number of poor graduates do
not access their email accounts at all resulting in them not partaking in email based
survey like this one. Therefore other ways should be considered in order to contact
poorer participants.
It is unclear whether my two categories of unemployment added meaningful
value to the literature. Possibly the prevalence found in this study was slightly lower
than found in other studies because of this definition. However, it is more likely to
be due to my sample being over-representative of populations known to have better
employment prospects namely Whites, males, and post-graduates.
In summary I was satisfied with the quantitative component of the research. I
was specifically happy with the large sample size that was representative of
graduates across different public higher education institutions in South Africa and
with the inferential statistics reported as these are often absent in graduate
unemployment research.
Reflecting on the interview process, telephonic recorded interviews worked
well and I would utilise this approach again. The broad interview questions allowed

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for open discussion and for new insights to be revealed. Unfortunately I do not think
the full potential of qualitative research was achieved in this research possibly
because of the small sampling frame resulting in few participants and the relatively
short interviewing time with each participant. I would suggest that further
qualitative research explore the research aims in more depth with each participant.
However, the ten interviews conducted did allow for inferences to be made based
on a balance of the survey and interview results. For example, the findings around
the importance of access to resources was found in the survey, it was explained in
the interviews and therefor resulted in finding based on a balance of quantitative
and qualitative data.
To conclude the implications for research methodology, I highlight areas
requiring further study. New areas of study include; the role of poverty in relation to
(i) the cost of looking for work, (ii) the resources required to look for work, and (iii)
how recruitment practices disadvantage poorer graduates; how higher education
institutions’ reputations are built and maintained in the public and how this relates
to the employment of their graduates; and the assumptions of, provision of and
effectiveness of career services. Furthermore graduate unemployment studies
should elaborate on their theoretic or conceptual framework and their design. For
example, where causality is being investigated, the necessary design criteria should
be met.

5.1.2 Implications for theory

In line with the areas for further study outlined above, I suggest that graduate
unemployment studies shift their focus from the individual to understanding the
unemployed graduate in their context. In the literature review I raised community
psychology as a framework to facilitate this shift. As the research findings have
supported this need I now revisit principles of community psychology in more detail
to support this suggestion.
Community psychology is concerned with transforming the way in which
social problems are conceptualized and understood by taking cognizance of social
issues and environmental stressors (Seedat, et al., 2001). Relating to graduate
unemployment, social issues would include such things as the presence of
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discriminatory recruitment practices, and of the negative reputation of certain
higher education institutions. Environmental stressors would include poverty and
the resulting lack of resources, the perceived ineffectiveness of graduate
recruitment fairs and the absence of networks for some graduates. Furthermore,
community psychology is aware of and appreciative of the interaction between
individuals and their environments.
In terms of the causes and solutions to problems, practitioners in the
community psychology attempt to develop theory and practice relevant to the
majority of the South African population who were oppressed during apartheid
(Pretorius-Heuchert & Ahmed, 2001). This is relevant as “unemployment is both a
cause and a result of the poverty situation in which people find themselves”
(Swanepoel and de Beer, 2009, p6). It as a cause, since without a job a person has no
income and cannot afford to pay for the resources required to look for work. It is a
result because inability to look for work prevents a person from finding employment.
Unemployment is in many instances also the result of isolation and vulnerability
(Swanepoel and de Beer, 2009). For example, because of the distance from town
centres experienced by those living in rural areas, and the lack of connections to the
job market resulting from having unemployed family members, the result is that
poor graduates are in many different ways isolated from the job market. They find it
difficult to gain access to employment opportunities due to their insufficient access
to newspapers, computers and the internet. At another level poor graduates are
also vulnerable to unemployment as the poor have nothing to bargain with when
approached with bribes. As the recurrent cycle of poverty is evident in both the
literature and this research, and given South Africa’s history, I argue that community
psychology principles should be applied to the study of graduate unemployment in a
framework that appreciates individual demographic and educational factors in
context of both higher education and graduate employment factors.
As I have proposed that graduate unemployment literature take a community
psychology approach it is necessary to review the critiques of this approach.
Prilleltensky and Nelson (1997, cited in Viljoen & Eskell-Blokland, 2007) identify five
values that should guide the implementation of interventions in communities. These

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are: health; caring and compassion; self-determination and participation; human
diversity; social justice; and holism9. These authors argue that the values that
support change within existing systems are often foregrounded, while the values
that support transformation of existing systems and especially power relationships
often do not receive enough attention. An example applied to the study of graduate
unemployment is that graduate employers possess significant power in the
recruitment process and therefore if change is to be achieved in the overall
unemployed graduate population, research and intervention at the graduate
employer’s level would be required. Other related levels and systems include; how
perceptions of higher education institutions are built and maintained through
channels such as the media and graduate recruitment fairs and, how these relate to
subsequent graduate recruitment practices.
A second critique of mainstream community psychology is that the emphasis
on social aspects of psychological functioning lead to the neglect of emotional
aspects of human psychology (Gibson & Swartz, 2004 cited in Viljoen & Eskell-
Blokland, 2007). In other words, the underlying emotion of individuals and groups
are not addressed in the process of change. This study looked at physical or
concrete needs of an unemployed graduate, such as the resources they require to
look for work, but the study did not look at unemployed graduates more abstracts
needs such as the motivation and resilience they require to look for work in the face
of lack of feedback from employers and perceived rejection. This reiterates the
importance of studying the psychological resources, psychological stressors and
psychological effects of unemployment on individual and groups of graduates. It is
also necessary to understand career service practitioners and graduate recruiters as
individuals, as well as communities, in order to understand what informs and
sustains their behavior. Without attention to all levels of analysis and intervention,
sustained change is unlikely to occur.
Furthermore, in proposing a shift from studying graduate unemployment
from an individual perspective to one at a broader community level, it is necessary

9
These values are discussed in Visser, M. (2001) Community Psychology. In M. Visser (Ed)
Contextualing Community Psychology in South Africa (pp.2-14). Pretoria, South Africa. Van Schaik.

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to define what is meant by the term ‘community’ in this context. For example, who
are members of the community, to what extent are the members similar or
different, and what are the assumptions underlying this definition of community. In
this research the term ‘community’ has included (1) the graduate, (2) their higher
education institution and (3) graduate employers. To a small extent the research
looked at the graduate’s family composition. Further conceptual development of a
community based graduate unemployment model is required to build on this
preliminary model (presented below as Figure 12).
In addition to a theoretical shift from the individual to studying the larger
socio-political context, I also propose a through exploration of the assumptions of
current career services. As mentioned in the literature review, career guidance is
defined as the services intended to assist individuals make occupational and
educational choices and manage their careers (Watts & Fretwell, 2004). These
authors go on to say that career guidance can promote social change such as
increased equality, inclusion in and access to educational and labour market
opportunities.
However, in my research, career guidance was not significantly related to
employment status and furthermore the interview participants explicitly state how
socio-economic factors exclude them from opportunities and prevent them from
gaining employment. For example Sizwe’s higher education institution choice and
course choice were inhibited by his reliance on a loan (Extract 1); Nomsa can only
apply for work when she has money or when she can borrow a laptop (Extract 8),
and Lindy lost a job because she couldn’t afford the bribe (Extract 12). From these
examples it is clear that their choices are inhibited by financial constraints and
therefore no current form of career service could assist with the difficulties
identified in the examples.
Current career services are based on the assumption of choice and fail to
address issues outside of the graduates control, for example the reputation of the
higher education institution, discrimination in recruitment practices such as
employers only visiting historically White institutions for graduate recruitment fairs
and lack of resources required to look for work. I have not studied the training they

111
provide to students but Pauw et al. (2006) reported that graduates are unable to
deal with interviews in a mature manner and I found that they seem unable to deal
with difficult recruitment situation. This is shown, for example, in Extract 14 when
Nomsa shows her vulnerability to being made a fool of if she tries to report the
perceived bribe.
Beyond their assumption of individual choice, other potential problems with
higher education institutions’ career services became evident. Most importantly,
the services do not extend to graduates and therefore I infer that higher education
institutions do not perceive themselves to be responsible for their graduates once
they have left the institution. In clarifying who is responsible for unemployed
graduates, the South African Qualifications Authority report that “the National Youth
Development Agency (NYDA), with the Department of Higher Education and Training
(DHET) via Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs), together with business
and employers are responsible for career development services to youth not in
education, training or employment” (SAQA, 2013, p.12). The numerous stakeholders
responsible for graduate unemployment may create a situation where responsibility
is diluted among role-players. Nevertheless, resources which students have access
to through their university such as computers, the internet, employer information
and contact with employers are not available to them once they graduate. The
subsequent expense of these resources significantly inhibits their ability to look for
work.
Beyond access to resources (or the lack thereof), this study found evidence of
discrimination in recruitment practices that adversely affect poor graduates.
Existence of these practices was established but unanswered questions include: how
is nepotism defined; how are illegal recruitment agreements negotiated, and; who
are the drivers of these illegal practices?
To conclude this section, my two suggestions for graduate unemployment
research going forward are (1) to consider principles of community psychology in
order to develop framework for understanding unemployed graduates within the
context of higher education and graduate recruitment, and (2) to question the
assumptions of current career services, particularly with relation to the assumption

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 of choice and the subsequent assumption that all graduates have equal access to the
labour market once they leave the higher education institution. In light of these two
suggestions, I present a revised conceptual framework that includes new variables
(presented in bold) relating to the role of higher education, the role of graduate
employers and to structures in the environment that influence the relationship
between factors of the individual and factors relating to graduate employers and
higher education institutions’ career services.

Figure 12: Revised graduate unemployment conceptual framework

Resources required by
graduate to apply for Factors associated with
vacancies graduate unemployment
relating to graduate employers
Cycle of poverty
 Recruitment strategies
 Discrimination in
Factors associated with graduate recruitment (Nepotism Factors associated with graduate
unemployment relating to the and bribery) unemployment relating to the
individual labour market

 Race  Mismatch between

 Gender higher education supply
 Socio-economic status and labour market
 Education demand
 Job search methods  Increasing labour force
 Attachment to the labour participation
market


Graduate
Factors associated with graduate
unemployment relating to higher unemployment
education institutions

 Provision of career services

 Assumption of these services
Youth unemployment
 Absence of services to
graduates

2003-2005
1994
Restructuring of
End of apartheid
higher education in
South Africa

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5.1.3 Implications for policy
Policies associated with graduate unemployment should appreciate and address
both individual and structural aspects of graduate unemployment. Similarly
interventions to alleviate unemployment should be implemented and effective at
these different levels. In my opinion, policies should specifically address challenges
that low socio-economic status groups face when entering into, during and
graduating from higher education as well as when seeking employment. Lack of
attention given to this group may result in the inequalities of the past being
perpetuated.
This research has looked at the role of higher education institutions in
providing career services and the role of graduate recruiters with regards to
graduate unemployment. Therefore policy recommendations are made to these two
role players.

5.1.3.1 Recommendations to higher education institutions

Higher education institutions should consider their role when accepting students in
fields of study shown by Moleke (2005, 2010) to have lower employment prospects
and so should their admissions policy. As Cliff (2003) reports - higher education
institutions have a moral responsibility to assist the students they accept to succeed
in higher education, and possibly this moral responsibility should in some way
extend to ensuring graduates enter the work place.
The career services they offer should take into account factors outside of the
students’ control that influence their employability. Specifically historically Black
institutions could be mandated to run graduate employment fairs. Additionally
resources required to look for a job such as computer and internet access could be
extended to graduates who do not have access to these services when they leave
the higher education institution. As most jobs are secured through networks higher
education institutions could look at alternative ways of connecting employers and
graduates beyond the current graduate recruitment fairs.
There is a lack of research on the long term effects of career services (SAQA,
2013) and therefore career services should ensure research is done with the aim of
informing and improving the services they offer. Without this evaluation of their
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services, their ability to serve the needs of changing student populations is
questionable and the current emphasis on one-to-one counseling and assessment is
likely to be sustained.
The National Student Financial Aid Scheme aims to provide poor learners
with the financial means to study at tertiary education. However, their rules around
the allocation of loans may serve to perpetuate the cycle of poverty to some extent.
Therefore, higher education institutions should acknowledge and address the extent
to which financial difficulties restrict learners from studying at their higher education
institution of choice and in a qualification of their choice.
Lastly, higher education institutions should acknowledge and address the
presence of illegal recruitment practices which affects their students and graduates.
They could articulate their role in overseeing or monitoring recruitment as well as
play a significant role in ensuring recruitment law is followed. I suggest that in order
to both measure and reduce illegal recruitment practices that this be addressed at
institutional policy level.

5.1.3.2 Recommendations to graduate employers

Graduate employers, too, should acknowledge both individual and structural factors
affecting graduate employment and unemployment. In addition to this they must
acknowledge that all graduates do not have equal opportunities in the labour market
due to structural factors and pre-existing inequalities.
This research has shown how the process and cost of a job application can
prevent low-socio economic status individuals from accessing adverts and applying
for work. Therefore, recruitment polices should ensure that recruitment practices
do not systematically disadvantage the poor. How this can be done is unknown, but
at the very least employers should acknowledge how their advertising and
application process assumes that all potential employees have the resources
required to access their adverts and apply for positions. There appears to be a
current conundrum whereby job adverts that are fairly easily and cheaply obtained
and therefore an attractive approach to poorer job seekers (that is newspapers),
often entail expensive recruitment processes that are then unattractive to poorer
job seekers (that is scanning and faxing documents). This example provides evidence
115
that employers could consider their application processes and the effects thereof
more critically.
Employers should also acknowledge that individuals spend large sums of
money in applying for work, and for some people this cost affects their entire
household adversely. In acknowledging this, I believe recruiters have a moral
responsibility to give honest and timeous feedback to applicants through a means
that is accessible to them. Employers should be aware that both lack of feedback, as
well as dishonest feedback, plays an important role in the overall understanding of
graduate employment in general but also at considerable cost to the individual
applicants.
Recruitment research (e.g. Schoer, et al., 2012) has confirmed that most jobs
are secured through networks. However, unfortunately the findings give very little
insight as to how these networks operate. More research is needed, for example,
regarding the practice of networking, the effects of networking on those already
removed from the labour market, and on the distinction between networking and
nepotism. While it is understandable why employers recruit through personal
networks, recruitment policy should acknowledge and address (1) how these
networking practices advantage individuals with links to the labour market through
employed family members and friends and systematically disadvantages people with
fewer employed family and friends, and (2) there likelihood that nepotism will occur.

116
5.2 Summary
The feasibility of this research ensured that it was executed according to the
research plan. The research questions justified a mixed methods approach and
therefore the methods and data analysis allowed for the broad research aim and the
four specific research objectives to be met.
The prevalence of unemployment for those who are looking for work was
5.1%. This is likely to be a conservative indication as the sample overrepresented
groups shown to have lower prevalence of graduate unemployment. These groups
are males, Whites and post-graduates. Graduate unemployment was significantly
related to numerous demographic and educational factors. It was significantly
higher for the Black race group, for low socio-economic individuals who reported
difficulty accessing various resources required to look for work, and for those who
have spent the majority of their lives in a rural area. It was also higher for graduates
from a university of technology, those with undergraduate certificate, diploma, or
degree qualifications, and those who studied humanities. Interestingly having
received career guidance was not significantly related to unemployment status,
bringing into question the role of higher education institutions’ career services in
relation to the employment of their graduates.
The perceived cause of graduate unemployment centered on the expense of
resources required to look for work, the high cost of looking for work and graduate
recruitment practices that appear to favour those who are already attached to the
labour market or who can afford to influence the recruitment process. Career
services that are available to students but not to graduates could potentially inhibit
graduates ability to look for work. Additionally some assumptions of higher
education’s career services were questioned, such as the emphasis placed on the
individual and the choices they make, at the expense of considering the individual
within their context.
In conclusion, enabling access to higher education to previously
disadvantaged groups is one of South Africa's ways of attempting to address
inequalities of the past and lead the country towards increased
prosperity. However, some current higher education systems and services work

117
against this strategy and unintentionally disadvantage poor students by for example,
limiting learners’ higher education choices due to their reliance on loans, delaying
graduation, and providing career services that are possibly ineffective and
concurrently not available to graduates. In addition to this graduate employment
practices can also disadvantage poor graduates through discriminatory recruitment
and the presence of nepotism and bribery.
Taken together there are numerous risks and vulnerabilities that poor
graduates face that will likely result in their higher chances of unemployment. In
turn, this unemployment perpetuates their low socio economic status. In studying
both individual and structural factors that relate to graduate unemployment,
researchers can better understand how poor students and graduates are
systematically disadvantaged from entry into higher education, through their
studies, and into employment (or unemployment). If South Africa is going to
succeed in fighting poverty through provision of higher education, then a critical
analysis of graduate unemployment is needed to inform, amongst other things, both
higher education institutions’ and graduate employers service and practices.

118
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 Appendices

Appendix 1: Current higher education institutions, the merged institutions from

which they were formed and these institutions historical status respectively
Universities
University of Cape Town University of Cape Town HWI*
University of Fort Hare University of Fort Hare and Rhodes University (East HBI and HWI
London Campus)
University of the Free State University of the Free State, Vista University HWI, HBI and
(Bloemfontein) and University of the North HBI
(Qwaqwa)
University of KwaZulu-Natal University of Durban-Westville and University of HBI and HWI
Natal
University of Limpopo University of the North and Medical University of HBI and HBI
Southern Africa
North-West University Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher HWI, HBI and
Education, University of North-West and Vista HBI
University (Sebokeng campus)
University of Pretoria University of Pretoria and Vista University HWI and HBI
(Mamelodi)
Rhodes university Rhodes University HWI
Stellenbosch University Stellenbosch University HWI
University of the Western University of the Western Cape and Stellenbosch HBI and HWI
Cape University Dental School
University of the University of the Witwatersrand HWI
Witwatersrand
Comprehensive Universities
University of Johannesburg Rand Afrikaans University, Technikon HWI, HWI and
Witwatersrand and Vista University (East Rand and HBI
Soweto)
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University of Port Elizabeth, Port Elizabeth HWI, HWI &
University Technikon and Vista University (Port Elizabeth) HBI
University of South Africa University of South Africa, Technikon SA and Vista HWI, HBI and
University Distance Education Centre HBI
University of Venda University of Venda HBI
Walter Sisulu University University of Transkei, Border Technikon and HBI, HWI &
Eastern Cape Technikon HBI
University of Zululand University of Zululand HBI
Universities of Technology
Cape Peninsula University of Cape Technikon and Peninsula Technikon HWI & HBI
Technology
Central University of Technikon Free State and Vista University (Welkom) HWI & HBI
Technology, Free State
Durban University of ML Sultan Technikon and Technikon Natal
Technology
Tswane University of Vaal Triangle Technikon , Technikon Northern HWI, HBI &
Technology Gauteng and Technikon North-West HWI
Vaal University of Technology Vaal Triangle Technikon and Vista University HWI & HBI
(Sebokeng)
Mangosuthu Technikon Mangosuthu Technikon HBI
*Historically White Institution (HWI); Historically Black Institution (HBI)

129
Appendix 2: Quantitative sampling frame

Magnet Communications Survey SAPS 2010 1 SAPS 2011 SASS 2009 2 SASS 2010 Total

# % # % # % # % # %
Male 3588 63.43% 3230 64.55% 966 46.67% 2833 42.26% 10617 54.63%
Female 2069 36.57% 1774 35.45% 1104 53.33% 3871 57.74% 8818 45.37%
Total 5657 100.00% 5004 100.00% 2070 100.00% 6704 100.00% 19435 100.00%

Black 1339 23.42% 1352 27.89% 1339 65.73% 4983 76.00% 9013 47.05%
Coloured 304 5.32% 228 4.70% 118 5.79% 350 5.34% 1000 5.22%
Indian 733 12.82% 458 9.45% 129 6.33% 294 4.48% 1614 8.42%
White 3341 58.44% 2809 57.95% 451 22.14% 930 14.18% 7531 39.31%
Total 5717 100.00% 4847 100.00% 2037 100.00% 6557 100.00% 19158 100.00%

Business/commerce/management 2087 36.90% 1485 29.59% 1103 53.05% 3578 58.84% 8253 43.82%
Engineering/technology 1944 34.37% 1920 38.25% 286 13.76% 1062 17.46% 5212 27.67%
Sciences 448 7.92% 641 12.77% 240 11.54% 855 14.06% 2184 11.60%
Humanities/liberal arts 679 12.00% 555 11.06% 320 15.39% 116 1.91% 1670 8.87%
Law 238 4.21% 215 4.28% 77 3.70% 268 4.41% 798 4.24%

Health care/health sciences 260 4.60% 203 4.04% 53 2.55% 202 3.32% 718 3.81%
Total 5656 100.00% 5019 100.00% 2079 100.00% 6081 100.00% 18835 100.00%

Cape Peninsula University of

Technology 151 2.81% 152 2.83% 127 2.37% 651 11.08% 1081 4.92%
University of Cape Town 216 4.02% 216 4.02% 216 4.04% 216 3.68% 864 3.93%

Central University of Technology 56 1.04% 56 1.04% 56 1.05% 56 0.95% 224 1.02%

Durban University of Technology 251 4.67% 251 4.67% 251 4.69% 251 4.27% 1004 4.57%
University of Fort Hare 8 0.15% 8 0.15% 8 0.15% 8 0.14% 32 0.15%
University of the Free State 455 8.46% 455 8.46% 455 8.50% 455 7.74% 1820 8.28%
University of Johannesburg 305 5.67% 305 5.67% 305 5.70% 305 5.19% 1220 5.55%

University of KwaZulu-Natal 613 11.40% 613 11.40% 613 11.45% 613 10.43% 2452 11.16%
University of Limpopo 9 0.17% 9 0.17% 9 0.17% 9 0.15% 36 0.16%
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan
University 266 4.95% 266 4.95% 266 4.97% 266 4.53% 1064 4.84%
North West University 102 1.90% 102 1.90% 102 1.91% 102 1.74% 408 1.86%
university of Pretoria 585 10.88% 585 10.88% 585 10.93% 585 9.96% 2340 10.65%
Rhodes University 79 1.47% 79 1.47% 79 1.48% 79 1.34% 316 1.44%
University of South Africa 616 11.46% 616 11.46% 616 11.51% 616 10.48% 2464 11.21%
University of Stellenbosch 1169 21.74% 1169 21.74% 1169 21.84% 1169 19.89% 4676 21.27%

Tswane University of Technology 118 2.19% 118 2.19% 118 2.20% 118 2.01% 472 2.15%
University of Venda 10 0.19% 10 0.19% 10 0.19% 10 0.17% 40 0.18%

Vaal University of Technology 54 1.00% 54 1.00% 54 1.01% 54 0.92% 216 0.98%

Walter Sisulu University of
Technology 15 0.28% 15 0.28% 15 0.28% 15 0.26% 60 0.27%

University of the Western Cape 29 0.54% 29 0.54% 29 0.54% 29 0.49% 116 0.53%

University of the Witwatersrand 248 4.61% 248 4.61% 248 4.63% 248 4.22% 992 4.51%
University of Zululand 7 0.13% 7 0.13% 7 0.13% 7 0.12% 28 0.13%
MUT 14 0.26% 14 0.26% 14 0.26% 14 0.24% 56 0.25%
Total 5376 100.00% 5377 100.00% 5352 100.00% 5876 100.00% 21981 100.00%
1 South African Professionals Survey, 2 South African Student Survey

130
Appendix 3: Survey questionnaire
Moved to end of report

131
Appendix 4: Email to participants

Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2012 15:17:12 +0200

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Graduate Employment Survey

Dear Graduate

My name is Kim Baldry and I am conducting research for the purpose of obtaining a
master’s degree in psychology through the University of the Witwatersrand. I am
interested in exploring Graduate Employment (and unemployment) in South Africa
and would greatly appreciate your input.
If you have obtained a qualification from a public South African Higher Education
Institution, I would like to invite you to participate in my study. Participation is
voluntary and no individual will be advantaged or disadvantaged in any way by
choosing to participate or not participate in the study. If you would like to
participate, please take 10-15 minutes to answer the survey by following the link
below. The survey will be open for 8 weeks (closes 4 September).

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PQ6JZ9

Please contact me if you have any questions.

Thank you in advance.

Kim Baldry
082 599 2592

132
Appendix 5: Interview guide

This is a guideline. Conversation should be authentic and not read from the paper.

Introduction
This study is for my master’s degree at Wits University and is on the topic of
Graduate Unemployment. Based on your answers to the survey questionnaire that
you completed around two months ago, I have selected you to be interviewed.
I will ask you a few questions but please talk freely and openly, you can interrupt me
or say anything unrelated to the question if you like at any time.

Everything you say is confidential, and your name will not appear anywhere in my
report. The interview will be recorded and if direct quotations from your interview
are published in my report then you will be assigned a pseudonym to ensure
confidentiality. The recording and transcript will be kept on my computer which is
password protected, so no-one other than myself can access this interview. You may
refuse to answer any questions and you may stop the interview at any stage if you
do not want to continue. We should take around 30 minutes. If necessary and if you
agree, I may phone you back with a few follow up questions.

Questions
1. To begin with can you tell me when you finished Grade 12 and what you have
done since finishing high school? Follow up with probing questions such as;
- How did you choose your course?
- Who paid for your course? Etc.

2. In the survey you said that you are currently unemployed and looking for
work, is that still the case? Follow up with probing questions such as;
- How have you looked for jobs in the past?
- What was good/positive about these jobs or about the experience of looking
for work?
- What was bad/negative about these jobs or the experience of looking for
work?
- What do you think makes it difficult for you to find work?

3. What do you think you university did well with regards to preparing you for
work, or preparing you to look for work?

4. What do you think you university should have done better with regards to
preparing you for work or preparing you to look for work?
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 5. Is there anything else that you would like to tell me that might assist me in
understanding graduate unemployment that you haven’t already said?

Please SMS me if you would like me to phone you back for any reason, maybe you
would like to add something to you interview, or even if you want to withdraw from
the research.

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Appendix 6: University clearance letter

UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND. JOHANNESBURG

HUMAN RESEARCH ETHICS COMMITTEE (SCHOOL OF HUMAN & COMMUNITY

DEVELOPMENT

CLEARANCE CERTIFICATE
PROJECT TITLE:
Graduate unemployment in South Africa: Prevalence,
INVESTIGATORS characteristics and perceived causes

DEPARTMENT DATE Baldry Kim

CONSIDERED DECISION OF Psychology

COMMITTEE* 04/05/12
PROTOCOL NUMBER:
MPSYC/12/011 IH Approved

This ethical clearance is valid for 2 years and may be renewed upon
application

CHAIRPERSON
DATE: 20 June 2012 (Professor K Cockcro]

cc Supervisor:
Prof. B Barnes
Psychology

DECLARATION OF INVESTIGATOR (S)

To be completed in duplicate and one copy returned to the Secretary, Room 100015, 10th floor, Senate
House, University.

1/we fully understand the conditions under which I am/we are authorized to carry out the abovementioned
research and I/we guarantee to ensure compliance with these conditions. Should any departure be contemplated
from the research procedure, as approved, 1/we undertake to submit a revised protocol to the Committee.This
ethical clearance will expire on 31 December 2014

PLEASE QUOTE THE PROTOCOL NUMBER IN ALL ENQUIRIES

135