If Education Is the Key, Why Are Some Still Locked Out?

By: Augusta Osmatu Bangura

We grew up believing education was the “master key”. Study hard, pass your exams, collect your certificate, and doors would open. Not someday, not maybe, just… open. For many graduates today, the key is still in their hands. The doors are real, but nothing clicks.

Every year, Sierra Leone produces thousands of graduates. They leave university with transcripts that speak fluently and confidence that has been rehearsed for years. Yet, when they step into the job market, silence answers them. Emails go unanswered, applications disappear into digital voids, interviews (if they come at all), end with polite smiles and no call back. So the question is no longer whether education matters, it does and that’s never been on trial. The question is why education, on its own, no longer seems enough.

Mr. Brian James, communications lead at NAMATI, describes it bluntly: “Not employable doesn’t mean uneducated. It means someone can pass exams but freeze when asked to perform. It means handing in a degree and being unable to demonstrate the skill behind it. Knowing the theory of writing but being unable to write. Knowing ethics exist, but not knowing how to practice them.”

He remembers interviewing a graduate with impressive grades. On paper, everything looked right. Then came a simple writing exercise. What followed was not just disappointing but revealing. Training such a graduate from scratch would mean undoing years of formal education just to reach the starting line. Most employers, pressed for time and results, simply cannot afford that. But this story is not as simple as blaming universities or condemning graduates.

Mr. Sheku Putka Kamara, a lecturer at Fourah Bay College, insists education should do more than transfer knowledge. It should prepare students to use it. Theory, he argues, is necessary, but theory without practice is like giving someone a map without teaching them how to walk. The challenge, however, is real: limited equipment, inadequate facilities, and systems still catching up with the demands of a changing world. Even so, Kamara reminds us that this is the information age. Knowledge is no longer locked inside lecture halls. Learning now requires curiosity, initiative, and sometimes discomfort. Education, in his view, is a shared responsibility between institutions and students, classrooms and curiosity.

And then there is the graduate, standing in the middle of it all. Alusine Salieu Kargbo graduated in 2025 with a degree in Development Communication. Like many students, he entered university believing education would be his ladder upward. Lecturers testified personal success stories and society held up examples. The message was clear: education leads to opportunity. But reality however, arrived, and just like that, the future he had been told to envision was out of sight.

Job applications multiplied, responses did not. Experience was demanded (years of it) from someone just starting out. One opportunity came, but the salary could not sustain the cost of living. Practical skills were assumed, not taught. Digital tools were expected, not introduced. Mass communication, he says, is meant to be practical. Yet there were no labs, no structured training in editing, content creation, or digital production. These were the very skills employers now ask for. The irony here is, graduates leave school only to pay again to learn what the job market already expects.

Still, Kargbo is careful not to place all the blame elsewhere. Students, he admits, also have responsibility. But responsibility without structure is a heavy burden. “If I’m studying mass communication,” he asks, “where is the mass communication?” If practice is never required, if assignments never push beyond theory, how does practice form?

This… this is where the lock tightens. Education opens the door to the interview room, skills decide whether you stay. Degrees qualify you to knock, competence determines whether the door opens. Too many graduates are standing in corridors with the right keys, trying the wrong locks, or worse, discovering the locks have changed.

So maybe education is still the key. But keys evolve, doors are replaced, and unless the system adapts, unless classrooms and workplaces begin speaking the same language, graduates will continue to wait outside, qualified but uncertain, hopeful but unheard.

On this International Day of Education, the challenge is not to question the value of learning, but to ask harder questions about its purpose. If education is meant to prepare us for life, then we must ask: life where, exactly?

And if education is truly the key, then perhaps the real work now is making sure it still fits the lock.