Unis blamed for employer inaction Paul Wappett: universities' role is to teach people "not what to think, but how to think." EMPLOYERS are blaming universities for their own shortcomings, a Sydney education conference heard yesterday. Open Universities Australia CEO Paul Wappett told the Unbundling Education conference that employers routinely criticised universities for not producing work-ready graduates. But this "lament" coincided with "an extraordinary decline in the willingness of corporations in particular, but also government and other institutions, to provide their employees with on-the-job training." Mr Wappett said that when he'd been recruited by an oil company as a graduate "many moons ago," he'd been required to complete six weeks of induction training before being allowed anywhere near a desk. Company-provided orientation and ongoing development have declined since then, he said. Employers need an understanding that they have a responsibility to get the level of capabilities that they require. He said it was unrealistic for employers to expect the tertiary education sector to "supply them with people that they don't need to put any training and development into." Mr Wappett said the traditional role of universities had been to teach people "not what to think, but how to think." Some of these graduate attributes that are seen as not being present - things like communication, collaboration, teamwork, resourcefulness, resilience, initiative - I'm not sure they were ever really the provenance of universities anyway. Such skills were traditionally honed at home, school and in the community, he said. The conference heard that most employers wanted staff who'd been oriented by somebody else, with many job advertisements requiring at least five years" experience. Certainly we need work-ready graduates, but we also need graduate-ready employers.