Former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Prof. Ernest Aryeetey, is blaming the spate of graduate unemployment on the weaknesses in the structure of Ghana’s economy.
Speaking at the 10th Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Summer School, he urged the government to concentrate on providing solutions to these problems.
“The government has to accept that we have a major structural problem and until we solve it pushing all the kids into KNUST and Accra Technical University will not solve the problem. They will get degrees but they won’t get jobs, only a few of them will find jobs,” he said.
He also attributed the menace to the slow growth of the Ghanaian industry.
“The other part is that the industry is not ready for them. If you look at this, what it tells you clearly is that industry in Africa is not growing.
Industry in Africa is not growing, we have seen services grow but most of those services I can tell you as an economist are low scale informal activities so industry that requires the type of skills that the university produce is not growing,” he said.
The KNUST Summer School is an initiative that brings together staff of the university and their affiliate institutions and partners to enhance their knowledge in implementing sustainable development goals to improve the quality of work and promote higher quality in education.
This year’s Summer School which is being decentralized into various colleges and units is under the theme, “Academia-Industry Partnership for National Development.”
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Accent and Arts Limited, Mrs. Constance Swaniker encouraged the university to incorporate mandatory internships in their academic work.
“Internships and apprenticeship should also be part of your curriculum and should be mandatory for all students. It must be part of the credit hours of all students and it should begin from year one until they graduate. Don’t send them to us when they are in their third year and you expect them to work with us for three months, it doesn’t work that way.
The more you practice then you pick up skill set, so right from year one, they should be going to industry every year till they graduate,” she said.
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