Editor,

RE: "Who is to blame for poor performances in institutions of higher learning?” (The New Times, August 9).

This only goes to show the misconceptions people have about conventional academic education. It is not synonymous with vocational training and skills development.

A university education, especially a bachelors degree, is nowhere supposed to be taken as equipping students with job-ready skills that can immediately be used at all workplaces.

What such an education does is to provide a platform and the basic learning skills on which to develop the skills required by specific employers or industries in specific functions or job families.

Rwandan employers — specifically different industries/sectors and the Private Sector Federation — need to work with the Ministries of Education, and Trade and Industry as well as our education and training institutions to develop appropriate syllabi and qualification frameworks for different kinds of generic job families in different industries and sectors, and then engage professional training institutions to collaborate on forecasting their future needs and organise in collaborative efforts to deliver the skills development the labour market requires.

The role of our education system should be to provide the necessary literacy, numeracy and communications capabilities that are both basic requirements of today’s labour markets as well as the basic platform on which specific labour market skills can be developed.

Mwene Kalinda