Prof. Samuel Afrane, the President of the Christian Service University College, has called for entrepreneurship among graduates, an action he believes will alleviate the plight of graduate unemployment.
Addressing graduates from the University, Prof. Afrane encouraged them to veer off the conventional job search and take on entrepreneurial roles.
“Entrepreneurship is very important for every graduate. At Christian Service University College, we see it as a very important component of our studies.
“Every student, takes at least one entrepreneurship class before they graduate, we also organize seminars and workshops on entrepreneurship from time to time”.
“For this semester, we organized a virtual entrepreneurship class, where we invited people to speak on entrepreneurship.
According to him, graduates should think outside of the box when it comes to the channels through which they get jobs and earn an income. To him, the formal sector is choked and graduates who do not stray from conventional searches will have to contend with staying home for a longer period.
“Not everybody will find a job in the public or formal sector, so graduates should think of developing their own businesses and they must also be creative so that they don’t go home and stay for a very long time.
“Graduates should look around them and develop entrepreneurship ideas and begin to work on them. The pessimist sees difficult in every opportunity, while the optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty”.
Additionally, he appealed to the government to expand its scholarship scheme to private universities as private universities cannot survive, without the help of the government.
“I cannot end my speech, without re-echoing the appeal to government to support private universities in Ghana. The private universities, are stretching their thin resources to contribute to human resource development in the country and they cannot, do this effectively without government assistance.
“While appreciating recent efforts to provide scholarships to some students in private tertiary institutions, we believe more could be done to promote private sector participation in higher education delivery for the general good of our dear country.
“We pray and hope that the in-coming administration will give more attention to this appeal in the coming years”.
On her part, the chairperson of Star Ghana Foundation, Dr. Esther Oduraa Ofei-Aboagye, highlighted on the need for government to support private universities.
“Given the demands of the world we find ourselves today and the hurdles that private tertiary institutions face, it is important that they are supported in a way that integrates them more effectively into national tertiary education delivery.
“It is clear that increasing enrollment into public universities is not the answer to ensuring high quality education and academic standards”.
Dr. Ofei-Aboagye asserted that, the current student teacher ratios in the public universities, “are undesirably higher than the standards set by the National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE)”.
“If government is going to provide scholarships, for SHS graduates for tertiary education, it is important that private universities benefit from these facilities along with public tertiary institutions.
“It will give practical implementation to the expressions of public-private partnerships in education delivery to which this country has declared commitment”.
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