Browsing by Author "Allais, Stephanie Matseleng"

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    Beyond ‘supply and demand’: moving from skills ‘planning’ to seeing skills as endogenous to the economy
    (2022-11) Allais, Stephanie Matseleng
    This article questions the notion of supply and demand of skills, and, accordingly, the rules and tools that have been developed for skills anticipation in South Africa. I argue that there is nowhere ‘outside’ of the economy where skills are produced. Rather, a society and an economy need to be seen as an organism, where skill formation is a complex set of moving parts. The concept of supply and demand is unhelpful to think about skill formation because it directs our attention towards specific moving parts in isolation from the broader factors that shape them. This explains why, despite the existence of extensive tools and institutions for skills anticipation, and numerous institutions for social dialogue and stakeholder engagement, researchers and policy-makers argue that South Africa has an inadequate supply of the skills that are needed in the workplace and concomitant skills mismatches. The article also presents more specific problems with the rules and tools, particularly in the way the systems and institutions for understanding labour market demand interact with the systems and tools for the supply of skills – especially those tools that govern and shape skills provision. It argues further that, whereas there are real problems with these rules and tools, and while they can certainly be improved, the broad goals that they are intended to achieve will not be attained even with better tools, but that different conceptual lenses are required instead.
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    Education service delivery: the disastrous case of outcomes-based qualifications frameworks
    (SAGE Publications, 2007) Allais, Stephanie Matseleng
    International trends towards outcomes-based qualifications frameworks as the drivers of educational reform fi t in well with trends in service delivery and public sector reform. Education reform in South Africa provides a particularly interesting case study of this phenomenon, because of the very comprehensive outcomes-based national qualifications framework that was implemented shortly after the transition to democracy. Problems with the framework as a basis for education reform became rapidly apparent, and the system is now deadlocked in a series of unresolved policy reviews. A key to understanding this collapse is the role of knowledge in relation to education. The outcomes based qualification framework approach turns out to have very little to do with education, and in fact to have the potential to increase educational inequalities, particularly in poor countries.
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    Investigating the ways in which educational credentials influence employers’ hiring decisions
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-07) Sekokope, Abram Sello; Shalem, Yael; Allais, Stephanie Matseleng
    There is a strong link between formal education and results on the labor market, like employment and earning potential, according to a wealth of research. Academic credentials are frequently seen as a doorway into mainstream economic engagement on a global scale, which justifies corporate and public investment in higher education. What is not always evident are the interpretations that companies give to educational credentials in particular settings, such as hiring decisions, and what these meanings reveal about the recruiting criteria of employers for potential employees. The purpose of this study was to comprehend the significance that employers place on qualifications and how this significance affects the hiring processes. In order to do this, the study looked at the hiring of engineers at two different occupational levels at four South African State-Owned Companies. To ascertain the meanings that employers attach to qualifications when screening CVs for engineering positions, a descriptive phenomenological technique was taken into consideration and enhanced with the use of hypothetical CVs. Three theoretical viewpoints were used as the foundation for this study in order to comprehend employer opinions of what qualifications actually mean. They were the credentialism theory, the screening and signalling theories, and the human capital theory. According to the study, ownership of a qualification gave an individual a competitive edge in the labor market and was viewed as a main selection criterion from all three theoretical viewpoints. Main findings: The selection criteria for the two engineering positions at the two distinct levels were compared in this study. First, the results imply that the recruiting standards for a Junior Manager Mechanical Engineering post and an Electrical Engineering Technician, a lesser entry-level role, differ significantly. I discovered that the primary distinction between the two was the importance of qualifications in the hiring process for lower entry-level positions. The findings indicate that at this level, employers view qualifications as the main criterion for choosing the best applicant for the position because they believe they provide a sufficient indication of the knowledge and skills needed to perform the work. According to the statistics, individuals with the most relevant credentials and those who earned high marks in their degrees and certifications were seen as having a greater understanding of the subject matter of their credentials and were therefore given preference during the hiring process. This result appears to support the human capital theory's assertion that qualifications represent knowledge and abilities because it substantially aligns with its underlying premises. Secondly, I found that, when it came to the management role, candidates' qualifications were not taken into account in isolation but rather coupled with additional credentials, such as prior work experience. In reality, I discovered that in this area, job experience was valued equally to or even more than qualifications when hiring at management levels. For instance, it seemed that companies would prefer to go with someone with work experience in some situations, such as when the minimal qualification criteria was not entirely completed. Although the focus of my study was on qualifications, some of the companies made a strong case for the value of prior job experience, sometimes at the price of qualifications. While this does not go against the principle of human capital, it does imply that job experience may be viewed as a more valuable indicator of applicable human capital than qualifications for management roles. Finally, I discovered that job experience was essential for the development of soft skills like problem solving, teamwork, communication, and leadership, among others. According to the statistics, these talents can be developed over time with the proper amount of work experience, mentoring, and coaching. Fourth, I discovered that the relationship between work experience and qualifications was complex and complementary, and that worker productivity was not a function of qualifications alone. According to study findings, companies would enrol recent graduates in WIL programs largely to supplement their education with relevant work experience, which would help them grow and maximize their productivity. Finally, I discovered that employers believed all schools were regulated and followed the same national standards of teaching and learning, thus they did not consider institutional reputation when choosing qualified applicants. This also resonates more with the human capital idea rather than the credentialism theory, which provides a social closure perspective, and assumes that the more prestigious universities are associated with better quality graduates. My interpretation of the aforementioned five key findings leads me to believe that employers primarily view qualifications as stand-ins for the actual knowledge and abilities needed to do the job. However, even when they were not just relying on qualifications, they still looked for qualities like job experience and soft skills, which are all referred to in literature as examples of human capital. These results strongly imply that the human capital theory is more important in explaining and influencing hiring decisions for engineering candidates. Human capital theory appears to have replaced qualifications as the predominate mechanism for explaining employment choices in the engineering sector, despite a few modest hints that qualifications served as a sort of screening function. In a discipline like engineering, where the body of knowledge is very closely correlated to the job that needs to be done, this makes sense.
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    Why the South African NQF failed: lessons for countries wanting to introduce national qualifications frameworks
    (Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2007) Allais, Stephanie Matseleng
    This article examines the South African National Qualifications Framework as a case study of a particular approach to the design of qualifications frameworks, which revolves around the specification of learning outcomes separate from educational institutions or programmes. It shows how an outcomes-led qualifications framework was seen as a desirable policy intervention by educationalists and reformers across the political spectrum, as outcomes were thought to be a mechanism for improving the quality and quantity of education as well as its relevance to the economy and society, for increasing access to education, and for democratising education. All these claims are based on the idea that outcomes statements are transparent. The article demonstrates that outcomes-based qualifications cannot provide the clear, unambiguous, and explicit statements of competence that would be required for everyone to know what it is that the bearer of a qualification can do. This lack of transparency leads to a further specification of outcomes. This in turn leads to a downward spiral of specification, which never reaches transparency, and an upward spiral of regulations, which is also caught in the logical problem of the downward spiral of specification. This model is not just unnecessary, but could in fact undermine the provision of education. The article suggests that while this type of model appears attractive particularly to poor countries, it is in these countries that it is likely to do the most damage.