The Data Link Institute (DLI), has intensified efforts to establish partnership agreements with industries in the Tema industrial enclave to provide specialised expertise to graduates and meet the training needs of industries.

Officials say benefits of such partnerships was enormous and would lead to the creation of myriad opportunities for organisations to carry out “unlimited employment information sessions” and close the yawning gap between academia and industrial sector.

“Industrial partners will be guaranteed a place at DLI career fairs,” Professor Jacob Jonas Nortey, President of the Institute said at its 7th congregation last Thursday.

Degrees and certificates were conferred on 320 graduates who successfully passed in varied programmes of study.

The courses included Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Business Administration covering Human Resource Management, Accounting, Banking and Finance and Marketing.

Others were BSc Computer Science and Information and Communications Technology as well as certificates in Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport.

Prof Nortey said organisations, under the deal, would have access to specialised expertise on the latest knowledge in relevant disciplines and potential future employees.

“Data Link will offer industrial partners’ support to meet training needs as may be requested and serve as an additional platform to access knowledge that feeds into innovative process of partner organisation.”

The Institute seeks to facilitate and establish regular internship opportunities its students to learn at first-hand from organisations during long vacations.

Authorities expect the students would return after the on-the-job training to beef up staff strength and expertise of the institute.

“The department is working efficiently by putting in place a range of activities that provide the framework for building strong support and lasting relations with a variety of constituencies,” Prof Nortey said.

Mr Ernest Ansah, the Executive Chairman of DLI Council noted that private universities had injected dynamism into the country’s tertiary education and increased access but they were facing serious enrolment deficit.

“This is mainly because our public mentoring universities are in direct competition with their mentored private universities,” he said.

He said the situation was dire by high service charges paid to public universities mentorship.

He also expressed worry that such costs were being aggravated by expensive charges paid to regulatory bodies.

Mr Ansah called for regionalisation of the National Accreditation Board (NAB) regulator functions to enhance their oversight functions with respect to logistics and human resources.

He expressed the belief that such moves backed by sufficient government funding would boost the capacity of NAB to perform their core functions with alacrity and greatest efficiency.

The Chinese Ambassador, Madam Sun Baohong, praised Ghana’s abundant natural resources, talent reserves, peace and relative stability in the sub-region.

She said patriotism, pragmatic policies and innovative thinking were required to transform such vital and abundant resources to drive national development.

She enjoined the graduates grow and exhibit such high-quality talents with a strong sense of mission, loft, ideal and indomitable spirit to promote Ghana’s industrialisation and economic transformation agenda.

Data Link Institute was established in 2006 and is affiliated with the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.