How to make yourself relevant everywhere (2), By Sunday Adelaja

“Every man stamps his value on himself… man is made great or small by his own will.” – JCF von Schiller

If we are to create a future economy where we don’t need to worry any longer about unemployment rates and statistics. If we are to stop witnessing the collapse of governments and political destinies en masse, we must pay more careful attention to the word RELEVANCE. Our higher institutions must begin to think more about how to educate students in such a way, as to make individual graduates relevant in his or her world.

When a graduate is taught and trained to make his or herself relevant everywhere, then that is mission accomplished. The goal of education especially higher education should be to train young men and women in the act of creating relevance wherever they might find themselves.

Can you imagine when the bureaucrats in government ministries of education, develop the curricula for tertiary institutions, geared at making individual graduates to be able to by himself create both demand and supply of his services? Now that is relevance!

“If you do not feel worthy then you have probably accepted some very limiting ideas about yourself. These ideas exist now in how you think about yourself, your strengths or lack of them, and your goals, or lack of them. Issues of worthiness are not about what happened to you in your past. It is not about your childhood or your adolescent years. The child and adolescent still exist in you now. A lack of self-worth comes from what you tell yourself is true about you in the present.” – Steve Nobel

The goal of education therefore, should be to take a young man through school who will come out with an idea or skills that makes him be in demand. Moreover, he possesses the necessary skills to meet the demand that is created.

Everybody is an Entrepreneur

One of the best ways to do this is to begin to add into the program of every faculty or department of universities, the subject of entrepreneurship. Wealth creation principles should be knowledge not reserved for special business schools or MBA graduates. Since according to the scriptures, money answers all things. It means everybody is in need of money. If you are in need of it, you must be taught to create it.

A doctor should not just be taught to cure diseases, he must be taught how to market his services. A mechanical engineer should not just be taught how to fix machines, but he must also possess the knowledge on how to find relevance for his services. A graduate of the faculty of education must be taught to identify the needs that will lead him or her to those who are in need of his skills.

“Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship…the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.” ― Peter F. Drucker

All graduates must know how to relate to money. In real life, no excuses. You cannot say because I didn’t finish the faculty of economics, because I am just a doctor, I don’t understand how money works. Real life treats all the same. Either you are a doctor or an MBA graduate.

Everybody in every country is forced to struggle to survive under the same economic situations where the main role is assigned to commerce and money. In a day-to-day economy, you must be able to know what to do with money if you need to survive. It doesn’t matter if you are a teacher, doctor, lawyer, engineer or a financial specialist.

The last I heard there are no special stores for doctors. Neither did I hear of a mall just for engineers and their families. I don’t even know if there are banks designated to serve only engineers and doctors. No my friends, everyone is forced to work under the same economic conditions.

Believe me, those laws that govern the economy and commerce are not written by the doctors or the engineers. They are written by those people who know something about money and economy. Will you therefore say that only a small segment of the society is taught the laws of money and commerce? Yet all of the society have to play by the same rules. This is the reason why I feel that, relevance of every graduate to the real-life economy of the modern world, is of utmost importance today.

Attitudinal Adjustments in Educational Systems

Beside entrepreneurship and the laws of money, there are other attitudinal adjustments that must be made in the way we prepare our future graduates. Our graduates must be taught in having the right attitudes that create relevance in real life. Even if you must seek employment, especially since it will take long time before the modern structure is replaced, yet people must eat, work and get employed.

How do we create relevance for ourselves if we are products of old school systems? It is in this instance that attitudes play a vital role in making yourself relevant everywhere. Without a doubt, this attitude must also be cultivated through the school systems, or as an additional subject in all the curricula of our colleges.

We cannot just say that these attitudes are only needed in the area of liberal arts. No they are also needed in sciences. Everybody needs employment. Whether you are a liberal art graduate or a science student graduate, everyone needs to put food on the table. Hence all must be taught in the right attitudes that create relevance everywhere.