The Sunday News
Munyaradzi Musiiwa, Midlands Correspondent
THE Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development has come up with a policy framework that its Science, Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) initiative becomes an Act of Parliament which also provides mandatory guidelines for tertiary institutions. Addressing students at Midlands State University (MSU) last week, Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development Minister, Professor Jonathan Moyo said his ministry has formulated a STEM 263 policy framework that seeks to make STEM a law.
Prof Moyo said most universities had abandoned their original mandate and turned into ivory towers researching on irrelevant issues that are not informed by the visions and aspirations of the society.
“In order for people to see that we are serious about STEM we are coming up with a new Act that would harness all universities and put them under one roof. Under the new law we are going to make it clear that universities and polytechnics are not ivory towers. It would enable that they are not self indulgence and as islands of some sort but should respond to the society. For universities to measure its success, they should look at solutions that address problems in our communities,” he said.
Prof Moyo said the country and continent was moving in the direction of industrialisation and modernisation. “The vision that we have now is a bit different from the 1980 vision. The time has come for our country to industrialise and modernise.
We have to create a Zimbabwe we want and a Zimbabwe we aspire to have. We need to stematise through the higher and tertiary education so that we contribute significantly towards industrialisation and modernisation. That is why we have STEM 263 policy framework which fix with the vision of our country and the continental vision of the African Union’s Agenda 2063 of industrialising the continent. When President Mugabe was chairman of Sadc in 2015, the regional block came up with its industrialisation strategy and also AU came up with Agenda 2063,” he said.
Prof Moyo said there was a misconception that politicians are responsible for coming up with solutions and creating jobs for university and colleges graduates.
“Politicians are a method of producing solutions but they do not have solutions. There are there to represent the communities and higher and tertiary education institutions are the ones that should provide the solutions. This is the standard elsewhere where countries in Europe, Asia and Middle East. This is what they have done,” he said.
Prof Moyo added that the country has produced a paltry 1889 science and technology undergraduates since 1980 most of whom have left the country which has contributed in the underdevelopment of the country and underperforming economy.
“We have an adult literacy level of 92 percent which means about 7 860 788 people are literate in the country. We have 593 994 people who have attained tertiary education and of these 509 138 had undergraduate degrees by 2012. Now most of these people who attained first degrees were in the field of Arts, Commercials and Social Sciences. Most of these degrees are irrelevant in our society that is why there is a very high unemployment rate.
We have produced a paltry 1 889 technologists in the country since 1980 and most of these people left the country,” he said.
Prof Moyo said entrepreneurship courses that most universities have included in their curriculum making them core modules for all degree programmes were irrelevant.
