Inaugural Lecture of Professor Stephanie Matseleng Allais

Why can’t we get the right skills?

Skills are seen as essential to addressing unemployment and lack of economic development—which in South Africa are catastrophic. But ‘skill’ is an inflated notion, used with little understanding of what occupational knowledge is comprised of, and what it takes to acquire it. Moreover, expertise and knowledge are produced in a complex set of institutions and institutional arrangements, which shape and are shaped by societies and economies.

I explore how the ‘skills problem’ is positioned as an educational problem, with the idea that there is a need for an efficient flow of information from labour market actors to education actors and vice versa. So governments invest money and energy into curriculum reform, qualifications reform, and skills anticipation. My research shows that in many low and middle income countries, ‘skills crises’ remain unsolved because interventions are based on wrong or incomplete analysis of the problems, misunderstanding the complex relationships between industrialisation, economic development, state formation, industrial relations, social policy, and educational development.

Add event to calendar