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ABSTRACTStratification, in the form of silent exclusion that is experienced by some groups of students because of the perceived low reputation of the university attended, and which the students have no control over, has been observed as a social menace that works against the concept of equity in education. To address this problem, a need exists for universities with lower reputations to go the extra mile to develop the employability skills of their students, which, in turn, will enhance their self-perception of employability. The major objective of this study was to investigate the influence of experiential learning activities on the relationship between university reputation and self-perceived employability among undergraduates in South African universities. Data were collected by means of an adapted questionnaire from 402 respondents drawn from two universities in the same province in South Africa. To achieve our objective, four hypotheses were formulated and tested through Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) using AMOS 25. The findings show that both direct and indirect effects of university reputation on undergraduates’ perceived employability through experiential learning activities are positively significant. To minimise the negative effects that universities with low reputations are likely to have on undergraduates’ acquisition of experiential learning, on their self-perceived employability, and subsequently on their employment prospects, the government, the Department of Higher Education and universities (particularly, the low-rated ones in South Africa) need to put in place some timely interventions, some of which are suggested in the study.

The study builds on previous studies of the consequences of non-performing loans on an economy. Using a seven-by-seven matrix in the impulse response function (IRF) of the structural autoregressive model, we find a long-run impact of an impulse to non-performing loans on the banking system and the macroeconomy in Nigeria. Conversely, non-performing loans also respond to the innovation of all macro-banking variables aside from the exchange rate and the growth rate to GDP. Also, the level of non-performing loans grows in influence in relation to the changes to the exchange rate using the variance decomposition tool of Structural VAR. Hence, a prominent role is assigned to the level of NPLs in linking the friction in the credit market to the susceptibility of both the banking system and the macroeconomy. This study passes the serial correlation tests and the three tests of normality.

Using data from selected national household surveys we demonstrate that most of the employment growth in South Africa since the late 1990s is the result of more individuals being employed informally. We also show that the informalisation of employment in South Africa has resulted in a decline in both nominal and real mean earnings of individuals who are informally employed, possibly due to occupational crowding. Finally, we explore the informalisation and casualisation of the labour market more broadly by examining the conditions of employment of all workers in the South African labour market. Our findings suggest that while the majority of workers involved in ‘informal’ employment experience poor employment conditions, there is also a significant proportion of ‘formal’ workers employed under conditions usually associated with informality.