EDITOR — THE recent announcement by Higher and Tertiary Education Minister Amon Murwira on the need to reconfigure the country’s education system, creating an inclusive structure that answers to the demands of society, is noble.
True, many university graduates are unemployed.
They sit and hope to be employed one day.
We need to relook at this; why not churn out graduates who are ready to be employers themselves?
Most degree programmes are skills-deficient.
For example, for every 100 graduates holding a degree in Agriculture, maybe only five-or-so are able to milk a cow.
Some have never seen the gadgets and to ask any further is an insult.
We have machinery rotting on most farms due to failure to carry out minor repairs.
Dr Augustine Tirivangana, writing in The Patriot, decried this void.
Simple farm machinery repairs ought to be carried out by the users, yet forex is lost by replacing machinery that has not reached usage expiry.
We support the vision to have brains as well as hands-on delivery leading to application and job creation.
“My ministry is restructuring the higher and tertiary education sector to deliver a university or college institution that is a training institution with five missions; teaching, research, community service, innovation and industrialisation,” Minister Murwira said.
It is saddening to note degree-holders clamouring for a salary hike of $100 yet they are supposed to pour in thousands of dollars more through job creation.
“For education which cannot produce jobs by itself is not relevant at all. You are the people, where the nation’s hopes and aspirations are to provide growth to the economy and create new jobs,” he said.
Minister Murwira said the Government will tap into the country’s rich heritage to develop the nation.
High schools ought to be feeders into the national growth.
Twenty years going back, the high school was not only able to offer academic excellence, but there were the F1 and F2 schemes.
F1 catered for the academics, with F2 catering for the skills.
Schools like St Peters Kubatana in Highfield, Allan Wilson in Harare, with more not mentioned here, were skills havens.
Today, all schools churn our straight ‘A’ students not able to apply the book excellence to production.
They remain job-hunters.
Let’s revisit the whole education framework.
Zimbabwe can be great again!
Tariro Mutinhima,
Mt Hampden.