Sinister signs in the sponsorship quota horizon
Friday, August 12, 2016
Uncertain future: Govt has imposed quotas on sponsorship at tertiary level
The ‘truism’ that tertiary institutions are producing non-market ready graduates, has been the talk of conferences and workshops held to strategise the country’s human capital development. In the past decade, institutions tasked with aligning higher education courses and market needs have been busy at work to resolve this national headache.
Essentially, the efforts have been around ensuring that the billions of Pula government pumps into sponsorship of tertiary students goes towards qualifications and skills that are required in the economy. The idea is to avoid ‘wasting’ scarce national resources, inflating the numbers of graduates in already surfeit sectors, to the detriment of sectors where hands are required.
It is not uncommon in this part of the world for parents to actually punish their children when they show signs of depression associating it with issues of indiscipline, and as a result, the poor child will be lashed or given some kind of punishment. We have had many suicide cases in the country and sadly some of the cases included children and young adults. We need to start looking into issues of mental health with the seriousness it...