A section of the senior citizens. Inset: Oheneba Adusei Poku
Oheneba Adusei Poku, Akyempimhene of Kumasi, has called on universities to keep abreast with industrial demands while training students to be innovative and entrepreneurial.
The traditional ruler said it was common knowledge that global giants such as Facebook, Microsoft and Google were established as a result of innovation.
“It may interest you to know that the founders of these companies were all in school when they developed these ideas. It tells us that no one needs not to even graduate to get something going,” he stressed.
He was speaking at the second congregation ceremony of University College of Management Studies (UCOMS) in Kumasi at the weekend.
A total of 184 graduates were presented with certificates in disciplines such as Accounting, Banking and Finance, Marketing, Human Resource Management and Procurement and Supply Chain Management.
Oheneba Adusei Poku, a former Ghanaian diplomat, was of the belief that students could develop the requisite skills to drive them on if the country’s universities embraced the use of business simulation.
“Introducing for example, financial trading modules and centres to prepare students for careers in Finance and Banking can set students on the course to success,” said Akyempimhene.
He noted that the method of teaching known as Financial Analysis and Security Trading (FAST) was pioneered by two professors at the Carnegie Mellon University in May 1996.
He pointed out that the philosophy behind the module was to exploit technology so that students of financial theory could apply abstract concepts to the real world with the ease of working with a textbook problem.
Oheneba Adusei Poku said business schools must introduce new programmes like strategic technology and innovative management, financial engineering, investment banking, energy and quantitative finance.
Dr. Sazrar Opata, Board Chairman of UCOMS, said when the institution was founded in 1974 as a professional tutorial college, little did they know they had established a university, which now has two campuses in Accra and Kumasi.
He said UCOMS was affiliated to the University of Education and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).
The Board Chairman disclosed that the University College was developing a strategic plan to fashion out a path to achieve its goal of becoming a fully fledged university within the next five years.
“It is the wish of the Board of Directors that no student should graduate from UCOMS and remain unemployed.”
Consequently, Dr. Opata said the board had converted the university’s Adabraka office in Accra into a secretariat for students’ entrepreneur association to offer business advisory services to them.
From Ernest Kofi Adu, Kumasi
