Graduates urged to be innovative

Source: Graduates urged to be innovative – NewsDay Zimbabwe

BY PRIDE MZARABANI
DEPUTY minister of Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development Raymore Machingura has urged university graduates to be innovative to survive in the face of high joblessness.

Speaking at a Harare Polytechnic graduation ceremony on Thursday, Machingura said the inherited colonial education system was designed to train people to work in industries which are no longer operating in Zimbabwe.

“The inherited colonial education produces workers and not entrepreneurs. It does not train you to develop your own industry. Is this what we desire as a nation? NO. Thus, our strategies are now focused on developing our education as a tool for emancipation and national advancement through industrialisation and modernisation,” Machingura said.

“Our Education has thus been reconfigured from Education 3.0 (a colonial design to produce a worker) to Education 5.0 (a design meant to industrialise and modernise the nation).

“Our education must teach our people how to produce knowledge that leads to the eradication of hunger and poverty, not just knowledge that leads to nowhere.”

Lack of jobs has graduates roaming the streets, and some engaging in vending to make ends.

Machingura said only innovation was the key to enable graduates to escape poverty in the face of a poor performing economy.

“In this regard, we are moving away from the traditional 8 am to 4pm lectures to a new Modular system that balances the time for teaching, research, community service, innovation and industrialisation. Through the modular system, we expect students not to be kept in theory classes unnecessarily long but to have practical education,” he said.