Editor,As always, this week’s Alline Akintore’s commentary is insightful and educative.However, it seems to me the mistake we make is in conflating education and skills. The two are certainly closely related; an educated person is generally easier to train so as to help them acquire practical, labour market-relevant skills.In today’s highly competitive globalised labour, commodity and services markets, successful countries are those that have got the balance of investments correctly in the development of their conceptual and academic base as well as in their vocational training.Planning for both requires close cooperation among government, business, and educational and skills development institutions. As a final remark, Rwandans need to understand clearly that an engineering degree is merely the basis on which to build engineering skills – it does not turn one into a skilled professional engineer ready to compete on the labour market and a medical degree can’t turn one into a veteran doctor until one has successfully completed relative residential training under an experienced senior practitioner over a period of time. MweneKalinda, KigaliReaction to AllineAkintore’s commentary, “Yet another look at our universities’ relevancy”, (The New Times, May 14)
