Tertiary schools must transform into entrepreneurial institutions
Tertiary schools in Ghana need to transform themselves into entrepreneurial institutions to provide workplace skills in their programmes for the youth and prepare them to establish their own businesses, the Chairman of the Governing Council of the Zenith University College, Professor Josephus Anamuah-Mensah, has said.
According to him, the problem of graduate unemployment was increasingly becoming unmanageable and students, therefore, needed to be trained to be job creators and not job seekers.
"At the international level, our economy has been described as being characterised by labour market inefficiencies, poor skills and inadequate harnessing of technologies.
“Educating Ghanaian youth to thrive in this ever-changing complex globalised world will require drastic transformation of the tertiary education system — its structure and how it operates in order to respond to the needs of the country and global trends," he said.
Graduation
Prof. Anamuah-Mensah was addressing the 10th graduation ceremony of the university college in Accra last Saturday.
The university graduated two batches of classes from June and December 2018 consisting 286 students made up of 109 males and 177 females.
They were awarded with various Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) degrees such as BBA Accounting, BBA Financial Management, BBA Business Information Systems, BBA Tourism and Hospitality Management, BBA Marketing and BBA Human Resource Management.
Prof. Anamuah-Mensah maintained that the country required a national vision to segregate tertiary institutions in terms of specialisations "to avoid mission creep."
"A suggested classification is: research and postgraduate universities, specialised institutions, including science and technology, comprehensive universities, and diploma awarding institutions," he said.
He further suggested that faculty in tertiary institutions should be expanded to include visiting fellows, entrepreneurs-in-residence, inventors-in-residence, policymakers, top chief executive officers and national figures.
That, he added, would encourage the development of entrepreneurial mindset and produce graduates who were job creators and not job seekers.
Advice
The Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast (UCC), Prof. Joseph Ghartey Ampiah, in a speech read on his behalf, stressed the need for the Zenith University College to be innovative and strategic in the courses it offered such that they addressed the challenges of the country.
“Existing programmes should be realigned to serve the current needs of employers and individuals going into entrepreneurship. The college should be strategic enough to stay relevant and become one of the top private universities in Ghana and beyond,” he said.
Prof. Ampiah also charged the graduands to be steadfast, focused and determined in their endeavours in order to make it in life.
He said life did not end at graduation from an institution of higher learning but rather a new passage of life.
“Remember to persevere, guard against complacency, focus on a goal and apply all the knowledge and skill you have acquire at Zenith University College.
“Take every opportunity that comes your way and never lose hope,” he admonished them.
