'Tertiary institutions must stick to original mandate'

The Provost of the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Professor Daniel Buor has urged tertiary institutions to stick to their original mandates to ensure that graduates are equipped with the requisite employable skills.

He said certain programmes at the universities were not necessary for national development, but only existed in the curricula to satisfy the requirement of providing education in an all-embracing discipline.

Prof. Bour was speaking on the topic "University Education and Acquisition of Employable Skills" at a symposium organised by the Ghana Employers Association (GEA) to mark the asso­ciation's 50th anniversary celebration in Accra.

He said the relevance of education for devel­opment would not materialise, if the academia and industry did not exist in symbiosis.

Prof. Buor disclosed that the theme for the ,celebration, "Reshaping Skills Development in Ghana to Promote National Competitiveness", was very important, considering the calls for the strengthening of capacity, and urged the govern­ment to make possession of laptops a necessary requirement for students entering tertiary institutions, because tertiary education had become more crucial in this era of globalisation which engendered competition at the global market place.

Prof. Buor was of the view that efforts by the government towards achievement of national vision and aspirations and competition at the global market front would be fruitless if aggres­sive measures were not put in place to develop skills that would be of positive consequences on the job market.

The acting Executive Director of the GEA, Mr Alex Frimpong, spoke on the topic "Skills Devel­opment for Accelerated National Growth" and examined the relevance of skills development, employers expectation, the role of the GEA and challenges facing employers.

He said for Ghana to survive in the knowledge econqmy of the 21st century, there was the need for a national workforce development strategy and programmes for retooling the workforce.

He suggested that the industry and training institutions should have a collective responsibili­ty to forge the needed partnership to develop a demand-driven curriculum that would produce graduates with skills suitable for the industry.

"Encourage lecturers in the country's training institutions to work in industry from time to time to enable them to blend theory and practice in the training of students," he stated, and called for the development of competence-based occupational schemes, which would be used by training institutions in reviewing and developing appropriate curriculum for the training of students.

The symposium was to enable stakeholders in academia and industry to examine the background to university education, programmes offered by universities and how relevant those programmes were to national development.

Other speakers examined gender disparity in enrolment and the relevant training for the industry, how significant they were and how the industry could be properly linked to academia.

The symposium was also intended to find solutions to salient areas bordering on skills development to ensure increased national productivity in all sectors of the economy.

The Rector of Accra Polytechnic, Dr Festus Addo Yobo, said as a result of a lack of integration between theory and practice, students found it difficult to even construct their own conceptu­al knowledge, attributing lack of interest by students in what they studied to the methodology used in teaching them.

He, therefore, advocated a radical transformation in the assessment of students to help achieve a better understanding of what is learnt, noting that the country was where it was because the right skills for the industry were not yet acquired.