Youth unemployment is a challenge that impacts university graduates as much as it does most of the country’s young population. In a bid to combat youth unemployment among its graduates and expose them to in-demand digital skills, the University of Cape Town has recently introduced a Digital Bootcamp.
The Digital Bootcamp, launched by the University of Cape Town (UCT) is strictly for the university’s graduates and will serve as a means to intervene in response to the issue of youth unemployment.
The ground-breaking initiative is a collaboration between UCT and Umuzi, a digital education startup co-founded by managing director Andrew Levy and a UCT commerce alumnus. The business trains top-tier talent for positions in digital roles at the major businesses and organizations in the country.
A total of 100 invited participating candidates will be enrolled in the pilot project, which will offer an alternative avenue to employment in a number of fields where digital skills are in demand
The pilot project, which is said to have already attracted a lot of interest, will be available to UCT students who meet the two requirements,
- Those whose studies at UCT were disrupted for more than three years, forcing them to halt their studies without a degree.
- Students who have graduated in the past three years but have not found employment.
Furthermore, While UCT’s dropout rate is far lower than the national average at 10%, the university’s Vice-Chancellor Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng still views it as being too high. Additionally, a study conducted by the institution in 2019 revealed that 78% of university students were unable to complete their degree qualifications on time.
UCT continued by stating that The Digital Bootcamp is an initiative with clear connections to UCT Vision 2030, underscoring its enormously transformative goal of unleashing human potential for a just and fair society.et
