Business education forum held for students

Thursday, September 18, 2008 (Page 44)

A LECTURER at the University of Cape Coast, Professor Kwame Boasiako Omane-Antwi, has appealed to tertiary institutions to design innovative programmes to adequately respond to the changing needs of industry.
He said “most of the universities and other higher institutions lack high quality faculty, intellectually aggressive students and sufficient resources. These difficulties affect high standard and deny corporations of benefits of higher education”.
Professor Omane-Antwi was delivering a paper at an educational forum organised by the London School of Business and Finance in collaboration with the Association of Chartered and Certified Accountants in Accra last week.
The forum, which was on theme: “Business Education Towards a Sustainable Development” was aimed at equipping tertiary students to acquire the requisite skills to survive in a competitive business environment.
Professor Omane-Antwi said “in order to seek and sustain partnerships, higher education should position themselves as drivers of our national and regional economy”.
For instance, he said, a university might partner with an industry to build research and educational programmes that would provide new approaches to the practice of manufacturing and at the same time prepare students who had both the technical and managerial expertise to lead tomorrow’s manufacturing industries.
He also urged the government to renew its investment in tertiary institutions.
In an interview after the forum, the Chief Executive Officer of the London School of Business and Finance, Mr Aaron Etingen, said the school aimed at turning Ghana into a financial outsourcing centre in Africa.
He said plans were far advanced to provide skills to students in Zenith College, Central University College and the Datalink University, all in Ghana.
According to Mr Etingen, students would be lectured by both Ghanaian and British lecturers, adding that all that was “aimed at providing the skill for students to be marketable both locally and internationally”.
He said students would be given ACCA, CIMA and CFA certificates, all of which were internationally renowned, in order to make graduates of the institution employable.
On his part, the Ga Mantse, King Tackie Tawiah III, said there was the need for stakeholders to invest limitless resources in education.
He said the educational system should be positioned to stimulate the needs of society.
According to him, the country was about to explore for oil but had not contemplated how to tackle the challenges of the industry.