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The Minister of Education, Dr Mathew Opoku Prempeh, has called on technical universities in the country to come up with innovative programmes in line with the needs of industry.
Additionally, he stated the need for the various technical universities to partner with industry in the training of students as well as instilling the spirit if entrepreneurship in students.
He said: "The institutions should be guided by the Act establishing technical universities at all times."
"Let the world see a clear distinction between technical universities and the traditional universities," he said.
Dr Prempeh said these in a speech read on his behalf at the 14th congregation of the Cape Coast Technical University at the weekend.
A total of 1,283 students including 834 males and 449 females who pursued various programmes of studies at the institution graduated during the event.
They include 20 Bachelor of Technology, 1004 Higher National Diploma and 79 Diploma graduates.
The sector minister further said that, collaborating with the various industries would enable lecturers and students to be acquainted with new technologies.
He said: "Because industry is engaged in business, it can afford to acquire the state-of-the-art equipment which may not be available in the laboratories of the technical university."
He charged technical universities to pursue their core mandate and said that the competencies displayed on the job by graduates of technical universities will be a good measure of the success or otherwise of the technical universities.
Dr Prempeh reiterated government's commitment in ensuring the success of technical universities, saying, "It will therefore do all within its power to support these institutions to grow to maturity".
Touching on staffing situation, he gave an assurance of government's commitment to ensure that, technical universities had the required number of faculty to provide the needed training for the nation's future leaders.
"The current payroll verification exercise being carried out by the Auditor General's Department will provide an important data to guide the ministry as it considers request for employment warrants received from the various technical universities," he said.
He admonished the graduating class to start paying off the students' loan facility they contracted from the Students' Loan Trust Fund once they get employed.
That, he said, would enable other students to benefit since the facility was a revolving fund.
Dr Prempeh noted that, the elevation of polytechnics to technical universities, would provide senior high school graduates with the variety of tertiary education programmes to choose from.
A member of the Interim Management Committee of the Cape Coast Technical University, Dr Ernest Yankson, in his address, explained that, the institution had entered into several partnerships with a number of tertiary educational institutions within Ghana and abroad for purposes of mentoring staff and student programmes and curriculum development.
He mentioned that, the absence of adequate number of qualified personnel and infrastructure was affecting effective teaching and learning and called on government to facilitate the completion of ongoing projects on campus.
Dr Yankson further appealed to the government to give clearance to the institution to employ the requisite number of qualified staff to promote effective teaching and learning.
"For the past five years, we have been making requests to government for a warrant to employ additional staff to augment the existing staff strengths so that the teaching load could be evenly spread to enable staff have time for other important activities such as industrial attachment and research," he said.
He further said that, management had to turn down requests from staff who had the intention of embarking on industrial attachment programmes because there were no staff to handle their load while they were away.
Picture: A section of the graduating class
MCE for Cape Coast, Ernest Arthur , presenting the Kojo Asemanyi award to Ebenezer Tetteh, the overall best graduating student.
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