The study seeks to understand the relationship between the academic programmes offered at the National University of Rwanda (NUR) and their relevance on the labour market. It was undertaken in order to examine how NUR graduates cope with various employment requirements, how their employers perceive them, what university teachers can do to equip students with some relevant knowledge and employment skills, and finally, how and what kind of partnership could be established between the university, its graduates and their employers in the design of academic curricula. The main aim of this study was to gain knowledge on how graduates and their employers perceive the academic programmes offered at the National University of Rwanda. To attain this aim, the following questions were asked: - How do NUR graduates reflect on academic programmes when they encounter work practice? - How do employers value the academic programmes offered by the National University of Rwanda? - How can the National University of Rwanda respond better to the graduates’ and employers’ expectations? The theories used were drawn from the area of higher education and the world of work. More concretely, the study reexamines the workings of the relationships between knowledge, higher education and society, dwelling on the specific context of Rwandan higher education. Illustrating the relationships between knowledge, higher education and learning, Barnett (1994) maintains that the three elements are intertwined and exist in triangular relationships. In fact, knowledge is an essential feature of modern society and higher education is bound up with knowledge which is achieved through research and teaching. Besides, the knowledge developed by higher education can benefit the society since higher education graduates are employed by this society. But as Barnett cautions, there is not always immediate correspondence between the knowledge sought by the modern society and what is favoured by higher education. Modern society requests higher education to develop in all students the capacities to be able to operate effectively after leaving school by transferring the received knowledge and skills from university to work, but the demands of the society change all the times. So students should be prepared to take on new forms of experience and knowledge and to develop new skills to operate in society. To achieve this, there should be real and increased collaboration between educators and employers.

This study subscribes to qualitative design. This means that it entirely relied on the worded responses, rather than quantification, from the participants in the collection and analysis of data (Bryman, 2008, p.366). To undertake it, a sample of 80 participants was targeted and this was composed of 60 NUR graduates and 20 employers. By ‘employers’ we mean line managers or else those people who are administratively in direct control of the employees who graduated from the National University of Rwanda. Participants were selected using convenience sampling techniques (Bryman, 2008, p.183), that is, participants were simply determined by their availability, accessibility and willingness to take part in our research. Due to internal loss, we came up with 70 respondents, divided into 52 graduates and 18 employers. Graduates and employers were partly found in Butare and partly in Kigali City.

It is expected that the results from this study might serve to support and help shape labour-oriented academic programmes that the NUR has embarked on since 2007, thus reinforcing their standards and quality. The findings reveal that 90% of the graduates were doing the jobs related to what they studied. Surprisingly, 98% of the graduates mentioned that they lacked some knowledge and skills that they should have gained from the University. The gaps in the academic education were also noted by the employers. To cover these gaps, graduates and employers propose that close collaboration between the academia and the world of work be initiated.