The ManicaPost
Ray Bande
Senior Reporter
THE mass production of tertiary institution graduates is Government’s deliberate effort to give more citizens access to higher education and equip them with skills to add value to the country’s economy, the Zimbabwe Council for Higher Education (ZIMCHE) has said.
Professor Dzvimbo said the academic degrees from all the 21 universities in Zimbabwe carry the same weight as opposed to the widely held, yet wrong belief that graduates from some universities are better equipped than others.
ZIMCHE has the duty to ensure that higher learning institutions offer quality education and training to students.
Fielding questions from delegates during the Zimbabwe Institute of Strategic Thinking (ZIST) conference in Nyanga on Tuesday, ZIMCHE chief executive, Professor Kuzvinetsa Peter Dzvimbo said participation of people in higher education in Zimbabwe is actually lower than other countries.
“On the issues raised here about graduate inferiority from one university to the other, as well as the issue of mass production of graduates, we have to understand that the participation of people in higher education in Zimbabwe is actually lower than in countries such as Botswana and others.
“The idea is to increase the number of people that go through our universities. At one time, our only university back then required one to have 15 points to enrol. But who said 15 points is a predictive validity for what one has to achieve academically? Who said only 15 pointers should attain university education?
“For instance, if you look at my ‘O’ Level certificate, if I tell you that this person went from Kutama High School to get a PHD from one of the top universities globally, you would probably think I am lying.
“We want to increase the participation of our people in higher education. The ‘A’ Level system is an anachronism.
“It is colonially inherited from the British education system.
“Who said Form Five and Form Six are a predictive validity to go to university? If you go to the United States of America, there is no Form Five and Six. This is the same thing with a number of countries,” Professor Dzvimbo said.
The founding ZOU Pro-Vice Chancellor said the production of more tertiary education graduates is supported by Heritage Education 5.0 that inculcates self-reliance in job creation as opposed to graduates that only apply for jobs.
Delegates at the Zist Conference
“We are interested in increasing the number of graduates in this country.
“The more graduates we have, the more our focus is placed on Heritage Education 5.0, where students are taught and exposed to ways of adding value to the economy by producing goods and services for themselves.
“When I went to university, I was told to apply for a job, but now we are telling the graduates to ask themselves what they can do to add value to the economy.
“That is a serious paradigm shift. The mass production of graduates does not reflect an inferiority of the degrees. We have a mechanism to ensure that we match standards regionally and globally,” he said.
“As ZIMCHE, we have made sure that 80 percent of the content being studied in our universities is the same if it is for the same programme.
“Therefore, there is no university that produces a more superior graduate in the same field. They all have to match ZIMCHE standards.
“The 20 percent is left to allow the different institutions to add their flair to the programmes, but ideally 80 percent of the content is the same,” he explained.
Professor Dzvimbo also spoke about the need for students to get skills in various areas.
“You will see that student studying humanities can probably study Artificial Intelligence or a module in Computer Science so that when they finish that degree programme, they are well-rounded and multi-skilled.
“We are focusing on producing a graduate who can fit in the current environment.
The ZIST conference was attended by senior Government officials, financial experts, heads of parastatals, chief executives, managing directors, educationists and policy makers from diverse professional backgrounds.
It seek to create champions of corporate excellence and enable participants to learn best practices from leading and fast growing companies.
