Systemic Barriers to Demand-Driven Higher Education in Developing Economies: A Stakeholder Perspective

Abstract

Higher Education Institutions in developing economies are faced with the chronic challenges of matching their output to the needs of the labour markets thereby leading to high rates of graduate unemployment, underemployment and skills gaps that have impeded economic growth. Although demand-driven education has been promoted as one of the solutions, no systematic consideration of the barriers to implementation based on the perspectives of stakeholders has been conducted. The current research adopts a qualitative exploratory research design, which applies the focus group approach in exploring the systemic barriers to the demand-driven higher education reform.In August–September 2025, two focus group discussions were held with twenty education stakeholders, comprising university leaders, policymakers, quality assurance professionals, and senior faculty members. Seven interrelated categories of barriers were identified in the reflexive thematic analysis, which consist of governance and institutional coordination gaps, curriculum obsolescence, resource constraints, industry-academia disconnect, sociocultural exclusions, technology integration deficits, and demographic pressures. Results have shown that these barriers are systematic and not confined, creating reinforcing loops that perpetuate educational-labour market mismatch. The first source of institutional coordination arises when there is a gap in institutional coordination that is defined by the dispersed dissemination of demand information among regulatory agencies, thus, ensuring that the universities do not get access to integrated labour market information. Resource inequities, both limit the capacity of innovation and rationalize the existence of outdated programmes. The research provides context-specific information about implementation barriers within resource-scarce contexts and provides empirically-based suggestions to policymakers aiming to achieve educational reforms in developing economies.