Universities add business skills to programmes

THE University of KwaZuluNatal and Mangosuthu University of Technology are to introduce business skills courses to their existing academic programmes.

The aim is to teach graduates entrepreneurial skills in the face of widespread unemployment.

Last month UKZN signed a memorandum of understanding with Trade and Investment KwaZulu-Natal to train students in business and investment skills.

These programmes, which will identify business opportunities for potential entrepreneurs, will be added to existing programmes.

The initiative comes after the unemployment rate increased to 26.7 percent in the first quarter of this year from 24.5 percent in the previous quarter – the highest increase since September 2005.

Graduates are joing the swelling ranks of the unemployed.

Professor Salim Abdool Karim, the acting vice-chancellor for research at UKZN, said the initiative was linked to UKZN’s mission to be the premier university of African scholarship.

He said the idea of being a premier university involved a sound partnership of the community, investors, government and the business sector.

“The universities are not only meant to train people to secure jobs within the economy. A university is also meant to engender a new generation of imaginative people who are willing to push the boundaries and drive the economy,” he said.

The Mangosuthu University of Technology is to add business skills courses to almost every academic programme it offers.

Professor Nokwethemba Ndlazi, the dean of the faculty of natural sciences, said every student would be required to do a business course before they graduated.

“MUT wants to produce graduates who will be able to create jobs for themselves and others,” she said.