Prof. Peter Quartey
THE DIRECTOR of the Institute of Statistical Social and Economic Research (ISSER), Prof. Peter Quartey, has called on Parliament to partner academia to develop policies aimed at supporting science disciplines.
Addressing participants at a stakeholders’ forum organised by the Association of Ghana Industries last Thursday in Accra, he said, industries in most of the developed countries had improved over the years with technological innovation as a result of partnership between academia and industries to continuously train students who meet the demand of industries.
He said “60 percent of all our graduates are into the humanities, there is no policy direction to promote engineering, among others, to be able to feed the industries. Go to European universities and you will find Ghanaians reading all kind of courses including our own universities, but ask yourself when they come out, what kind of jobs are they going to do? Besides that, even if they want to work in these industries, how many of them want to even engage them?
He, therefore, charged industries to involve academia in supporting some specific engineering courses with scholarship to study and feed industries after school as most of the few industries available in Ghana are even unable to offer placement to students for training.
“When I was a student at Warwick University 20 years ago, there were only 2 buildings, but now there are about 9 and I was told all the cars manufactured in the UK were attended to by Warwick University students anytime they had any problem, so you see, industry partnering with academia to solve problems helps to train the students,” he said.
He also charged industry players, as part of their programmes, to offer placement for internship for science and engineering students to enable them gain practical experience as experienced in other jurisdictions.
He further said that a lot of these well laid out policies between academia and industries had supported countries such as China, as students were only allowed to study specific programmes such as engineering outside their jurisdictions particularly those on scholarship targeted at offering employment for graduates.
Touching on the importance of data in policy formulation, Prof. Quartey said research underpins all policy formulation in any developing country, therefore it was important for Members of Parliament to engage academia, think tanks and relevant bodies to conduct research to formulate policies in meeting the needs of the public.
BY Ebenezer K. Amponsah