Final-year students attend entrepreneurship clinic

The Christian Service University College (CSUC) in Kumasi has organised an entrepreneurship clinic for final-year students of the school to encourage them to be resolute and brace themselves for the odds in the job market.

Presenting a paper on the topic: “Surviving in this jobless economy,” at the maiden clinic, the Director of Bridge of Hope Ltd (a multipurpose company), Mr Joseph Kyei Ankrah, said although many job opportunities abounded in the country, most graduates did not muster the courage to venture into those areas for fear of the unknown and lack of entrepreneurial spirit, which had been identified as the main cause of graduate employment.

Aims

The semester programme was aimed at equipping students with the requisite skills to be economically independent after school.

The clinic entailed an engagement of persons from academia and experienced industrial players to mentor, lecture and share experiences with the students.

Some of the topics discussed were the realities of the economy and the employment situation, surviving in the current jobless economy, the Bible and entrepreneurship, building money management skills, and professional days.

There are 12 public universities, 63 private ones, 10 polytechnics and all these together produce over 200,000 graduates each year.

Mr Ankrah urged graduates to go the extra mile by planning, conducting research, taking risk by creating new job opportunities, and creating new businesses or products which could be accepted.

“Risk-taking plays a very crucial role in one’s bid to succeed in any business venture and it is a major challenge that deters many job seekers, including graduates, from mustering the courage to venture into those areas,” he said.

Security

Mr Ankrah attributed the mad rush for jobs in the public sector to ‘job security’ which had compelled many to be locked up in public service instead of creating their own jobs and employing others.

The President of the university, Professor Sam Afranie, said the successful completion of the entrepreneurship programme by the students would expose them to the realities of the state of affairs in the job market and what they would expect after their study.

He said the institution would continue to put in place the right measures and programmes that would help prepare students to meet the needs of the job market.

Prof. Afranie painted a gloomy picture of the state of the job market in the country and said in Ghana, out of the large number of graduates produced by the various public and tertiary institutions in the country yearly, less than 10 per cent got decent jobs.

That, according to him, worsened the unemployment situation in the country, hence the need for the private sector to fill the yawning gap.

The president lamented that the private sector, which was the engine of growth, was saddled with many problems such as expensive and inadequate supply of electricity, high interest rates, high cost of borrowing and depreciation of the Ghanaian cedi.