‘Varsities must narrow gap with business community’

Bastiat Ghana, a liberal economy think tank says the present high unemployment rate in Ghana could be attributed to the gap between the universities and the business community.

The body noted that “the more the universities dwell on the power to look down on the business community in the area of reasoning and intellectual applications; the higher the business community respond by showing no interest in university knowledge, lose confidence and trust in the university system to make meaningful impact to their business development”.

“As a result the graduate becomes the victim of such developmental mechanism,” a statement issued by Dr Tweneboah Senzu, Research Professor of Market Economics Studies at TUA University and Senior fellow of Bastiat Ghana Institute in Accra, at the weekend said.

It said: “For the past decade in Ghana, universities have tried innovatively to close the gap between academics and industry. The question is; has it really translated into reality. Bastiat Ghana findings indicate no, rather the gap is widening.”

The statement said this calls for history to always be the guide of actions of the nation from old mistakes, and the need for serious attention in the aspect of the operational system of research and learning centres of Ghana.

“In an experimental test to university operations in Ghana, our findings indicate that the traditions of our universities to produce colonial administrators to feed state Institutions have not transformed much after 58 years of independence of Ghana.

“Despite the tremendous shift in our politico-economic management with the private enterprise out numbering government establishment with the potential to lead in the path of out numbering the labour recruitment of government in the near future.

“Secondly these elite per their training find it difficult to relate meaningfully to the less and uneducated component of the society, which their supposedly knowledge was to address their problems.

“Someone would have thought that the emergence of private universities causing the breaking away from state monopoly in regulating the educational sector would have brought such situation to an end. Unfortunately per constitutional requirement of affiliating with the same government universities fathoming in the old traditions, have cause their impact and transformation to the ideal Ghana as private universities, not much realised as it supposed to have been.

“It would be agreed that market competition defined the style of management strategies adopted by the entrepreneur to manage it capital and labour.

“So for the universities to build labour force independently from the contributions of the experience from the business community on how, they expect their ideal human resource to be, is just like dampening the universities product of labour, on the business community.

“Per the rule of supremacies due to legal authority confer upon them and likely, as a consumer in the business community, they have their power to accept or reject such product, as a result, causing frustrations to many graduates with great hopes from the university compound to the labour market.”

The statement said Ghana per it educational structures and systems are among the best educational systems in the entire continent of Africa but some of the outmoded traditions using to control the system are the factors affecting realistic impact and it benefit to the country.

Bastiat Ghana as advocator of a liberal studies promotes more of entrepreneurship science, is almost through with it College of Entrepreneurship Studies, which is going to be a new revolution to contribute to the art of liberal studies.

“Whereby it module of training and research is empowered by the experience and the wisdom of the business community place in the bracket of small business owners known to be less or no education at all.

“Our programme content of studies will be known to be built by the people and for the people, the statement said.

It said the character of a first through liberal college for the grassroots business men and women, because it is quiet worrying to have statistical report depicting small scale enterprise being the economic back bone of Ghana as a state, yet continue to remain in books for academic studies but never translate to reality.

“This module plays a strong component to support government in widening its tax net by having access to reliable data of the business operators and information from the community based level willingly to commit in tax payment due to the structure of the training module.

“With the college prepared to meet the higher level educational standards as prescribed by the constitution of the republic of Ghana and to assure it potential client that it international affiliations and quality standards it externally met,” the statement said.