Koforidua, Oct. 04, GNA- Koforidua Polytechnic offered admissions to 1,757 students this academic year for its morning and evenings Higher National Diploma (HND) programmes out of a total of 2,029 applicants received. Dr. George Afrane, Rector of the Polytechnic, who announced this at the 13th Matriculation ceremony of the Institute on Saturday, said the figure represented 87 percent of the HND applicants as against 84 percent of such applicants admitted last year. For non-HND programmes, he said 831 offers were made this year with a total of 523 students accepting the offers, representing an acceptance rate of 63 percent compared to 57 percent acceptance from last year. Dr. Afrane said the student population now stood at 3,708, adding that, the polytechnic best students this year had aggregates of 10, same as last year. On new programmes, he said the school now had four approved HND engineering programmes in Automotive Engineering, HND/Electronic Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Energy Systems Engineering. "The Automotive Engineering Programme is being funded with assistance from the NUFFIC Foundation of the Government of the Netherlands". He said, the three-year assisted project would end next year. Dr. Afrane said the school was using 350,000 Ghana Cedis of its GETFUND allocation for the year to provide facilities for the other programmes. To provide access for more applicants and to enhance the internally generated funds portfolio of the Polytechnic, the school is to introduce Summer Modular Programmes next year. "These programmes are being packaged so that hard-working students with good academic records would be allowed to squeeze one academic year's work into the long vacation period". He said that would make it possible for such students to finish the HND programme in a total of two years. Dr Afrane said the Polytechnic was seriously working on B.Tech programmes to be started next academic year adding "With the approval of the National Accreditation Board, we plan to start degree programmes in Accountancy, Procurement and Waste Management". "These will be three-semester, 18-month programmes, admissions will be opened to HND graduates who have acquired a certain number of years of working experience in industry". 04 Oct. 08