EduBridge Academy

"Higher education is the strongest, sturdiest ladder to increased socio-economic mobility" -Drew Faust, President at Harvard University

This implies that a country looking to achieve sustainable growth should provide proper education to its people.

The mismatch between the labour market requirement and the available expertise from Bangladesh university graduate cannot be over emphasized. 

The plan is to organize a graduate finishing solution focused on equipping Undergraduates and Graduates with the necessary skill set -both technical and soft skills that will be required o them in the work place.

With numerous reports on the potential for growth of Bangladesh, our solution is poised to bring about a forward-thinking mentality and a shift from the status quo where graduates rely heavily on government jobs to an atmosphere where graduates can aspire for the top jobs, start up their own businesses and ultimately drive growth in Technology, business, economics, and social interventions. 

Coming from a country with 23.1% unemployment rate and over 20million unemployed persons (Nigeria), the causes range from skill deficiency to lack of placement opportunities. Our program has contributed to the improvement in the employment skill gap having reached over 40,000 people through various channels including physical classes, social media, online classes, collaborations etc.

Unemployment rate in Bangladesh is 4.3% -World bank, but a staggering report by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics shows that about 46% of the total unemployed youth are university graduates according to its latest Labour Force Survey (LFS). This indicate a need to improve the quality of the country’s graduates.

To visualize this, a recent World Economic forum report; Bangladesh has 130 universities producing over 500,000 per year and more than two million young people enter the job market every year.  Of this, two-thirds of them do not get jobs, many of them are ill-paid, and the situation for women is worse.

The rise in the graduate unemployment space is as a result of the quality of education not matching the needs of the job market, lack of skill- based learning, preference for government jobs and the lack of technical and managerial skills.

Our solution is designed for Undergraduates and Graduates from tertiary institutions who are looking to get into top jobs within the private and public sector.

With the momentum Bangladesh is gathering in Technology, there is need to be able to apply these technological solutions to business and problem solving whether they intend to work for someone(employee) or own their business (Entrepreneur). Hence the emphasis on soft skills like problem solving, data analysis and critical thinking etc.

To make this work, we ride on partnerships across universities and our consistent conversation with employers who help us visualize the structural mismatch where graduates say there is no job and employers say there are no suitable candidates. 

 Our program helps bridge that gap between the talent need of employers and the skill requirement of talent (graduates). Undergraduates while in school are exposed to employability, the attitude, skill need, problem solving programs and preparation for the after school. Graduates who could not benefit while in school and now already at work who need to get into senior positions are exposed to advanced skill set, team leadership and management and office politics. Then, employers can now have access to quality talent.

oius

What makes our solution very innovative is that it is very cost effective and it is not in competition with any of the existing educational structures. Our solution is cost effective in that it offers the best quality hands on experiential training at a decent price by leveraging on our existing networks with professionals in different fields gotten through our years of experience to get the best and well seasoned professionals to come in and teach the candidates from a place of experience of what they do at their everyday workplace and by doing this we are able to offer the services to the candidates at a decent price.

Also the solution works in the form of a graduate finishing school. It is not in competition with the established models of learning such as a university or secondary school. It exists as a graduate finishing intended to bridge the gap between what is thought in school and what is obtainable at a real life work place by a program designed to teach practical work place skills and culture thought by people who are fully playing in that system so candidates get a firsthand feel of what the work place is like and what to expect even when  they have not had the opportunity to work before.

Good understanding of a problem is the first step to proffering the right solution.

Having played in this industry for some years, we are able to identify the major stakeholders(Students, graduates, universities, employers) and our constant interaction with them helps us provide a solution that meet their needs.

Also, we believe our solution aims at equipping one of the most vital part of the population that can drive economic growth and development with the skills they need to improve their capacity for value addition in any organization they find themselves in.

This is a solution we have tested in Nigeria the country we currently operate in. We have successfully trained candidates who finished from the university with a low degree who also do not have any form of work experience such that they become confident and skilled enough to apply for jobs they could not apply for previously and are able to make meaningful impacts in the organizations they end up working with.

1. Currently, we serve over 50,000 graduates, undergraduates and working professionals through our various channel. 

From our physical academy, we are currently serving a total of 100 people per stream for the graduate program, 20 per stream for the undergraduate program. We have 4 streams of graduate program in a year, 3 streams of undergraduate program in a year and 4 streams of the experienced hire program in a year which puts the total number of people we are serving in a year to 500 people per year.

2. We expect the number of people we are serving in the next one year to increase as we intend to create more specialized programs to cater to the diverse needs of our audience so in  a year’s time we will be serving a population of over 100,000 persons yearly.

3. In 5 years time, we would have gained more stability across all our programs and outreach. We will be serving over 750,000 people in a year for the physical classes, school programs and online solutions. We also aim to incorporate tech solutions into some of the things we do so we can reach a larger number of people across various countries.

Our major goal is to equip young people with the necessary skills they need to kick start their career and add value to the organizations that they join. A major way for us to replicate and reach many more people is through a program known as the “understudy program”. Here people who have gone through the program have the opportunity to come in and understudy someone who is currently teaching a course so they become good at it and they can eventually teach the course. This enables us to increase our facilitator pool- student, academy facilitator, and reach more people.

Also through our specialized program that we intend to create, we will be reaching diverse people with specialized needs who might not have need for the general generic graduate program, we are able to reach more people.

Also we are working on developing technological solutions aimed at helping young people discover answers to some of the questions they might have around their career and next life stages especially those who are just finishing from university and might now know what to do next. In doing this we hope to point them in the right direction early enough so they can spend ample time developing themselves to gain the necessary skills they need for value addition and self development.

Some of the barriers that currently exist include;

- Financial Barrier- Most of the other barriers are highly hinged on this as some of the other barriers can be easily solved if this is minimized.

- Man Power- This is also a barrier as the strategic planning and implementation of our plans needs the input of highly skilled labor who usually tend to go for better paying jobs and go to already established and well recognized brands so as to improve their own visibility and also their career progression.

- Outreach: The numbers of people who need this solution are dispersed. We currently have not been able to reach 40% of the market. 

- Nature of the physical academy- The facilitators who come in to teach are professionals who have full time jobs during the week, therefore the only time they have to come in to teach are weekends , these limits most of the high impact programm we run to weekends alone.

As for the financial barrier, we intend to organize programs where we can partner with companies to train some of their staff with the necessary needed skills for value addition. This creates a system where the companies pay us for our services and we are able to charge the companies a higher sum of money as against what we can charge most individual candidates.

Also, online and technological products help us reach more people, makes it easy to scale and can generate more revenue for our programs.

Likewise, the specialized programs have the ability to help us raise more funds as we intend to reach those who might be willing to pay more for our services (experienced professionals)

The constraint on physical academy can attended to with online products, where people need not come to the physical academy but can build relationships with their facilitators, get resources and mentorship opportunities.

Bangladesh shares a few similarities with the country we are currently operate in which is also a developing economy (Nigeria).

With similar population numbers and growth, similar number of universities and few jobs for the outgoing graduates.

We plan to adopt similar expansion plan as regards Online solutions, Partnerships with stakeholders in the university system- student bodies, lecturers, university management, Regional physical academies and Technological solutions for the many graduates.

Currently, the team is composed of 

Full time staff - 6

Part -time staff - 5

Our team is composed of individuals who have carried out and still working on over 10 research in Nigeria and outside Nigeria in providing the best solutions to skill gap and unemployment challenge.

We are a team composed of various culture, educational background and work experience. Hence, the diversity on the team helps us come up with well-thought out solutions.

Flexibility and adaptability is also a key attribute of the team. We have been able to provide solutions across border as a result of this. 

Student bodies in top universities- On campus events

AIICO pension managers - Final event sponsorship

EduBridge Academy is a graduate finishing program that provides solution to recent graduates by bridging the gap that exist between what has been taught in the university and what is obtainable in the workplace. We teach both soft and technical skills which prepares our candidates to fill entry and associate roles seamlessly.

EduBridge academy is composed of the undergraduate, graduate program. We also organize skill-up classes for specific skills and organizations. These programs are predominantly funded through tuition fees from students, organizations who seek our service.

We partner school associations and have an ambassador team which is present in over twenty universities across Nigeria.This has enabled us put our brand in the eyes of the public through social media and referrals which we get from past alumni’s that have attended the academy.

We offer professional teaching services in a highly secured and conducive learning environment to all our students which we have achieved through reaching an agreement with the school management in one of the universities to make use of their classes for a time range.

Our facilitators are seasoned and experience hands who currently make use of the skills we teach at the academy by doing this, we are certain that skills learnt at the academy are not obsolete but relevant in the workplace. In the long run we look at making use of our ambassador’s network to scale to other parts of the country by training them to be able to teach others this skill they have learnt.

Financial sustainability at the Academy means having sufficient resources to support all three goals of access, affordability, and excellence.

The academy has a sustainability plan that incorporates both the funding and the expected enrollment growth for the year 2020 while also sustaining expanded access in future years. The academy plan also includes modest growth in graduate student enrollment, organizing more skill specific program for alumni’s and organizations. The academy’s plan reflects continued efforts to maximize operational efficiencies and to control costs as well as sufficient funding to support the academy’s commitment to providing the high‐quality education students seek from EduBridge Academy.

Providing a solution such as ours, poses its own unique problem as solutions we provide are only available to a very few due to inaccessibility to information, funding and logistics. These factors from experience has limited the number of students who would have taken part in the program and so doing reduce the rate of unemployment in the economy.

EduBridge academy would benefit from the challenge because it would go a long way in helping to reach a large audience through the expansion of our ambassador network, be able to provide technological solutions(Currently rounding up our research) and also encourage the application of online solutions which would help scalability more cost effective and efficient.

Consulting firms

Investment Banks

CFA, ACCA - Professional bodies so they can provide update on curriculum improvements 

Microsoft -

Edtech companies like Udemy,Edx - For our Online solutions