Kumasi, GNA - The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) plans to admit 1,800 students from the less endowed secondary schools for the 2005-2006 academic year.

Professor Kwesi Andam, Vice Chancellor of the university, who announced this, said the university authorities had written to the authorities of the 300 senior secondary schools, which had been designated as less endowed to submit the names of six brilliant students each for consideration for admission into the university. Professor Andam announced this at an interaction with the media in Kumasi on Thursday.

He said the performance of the students from the less endowed schools who were admitted in the last two academic years had encouraged the university authorities to admit more of such students to pursue tertiary education programmes. He said the university increased admissions of students from the less endowed schools from 59 in the previous year to 329 representing a little over 550 per cent increase, adding that all the 10 regions in the country benefited from the programme.

Professor Andam said their performance was an indication that they had the capabilities to perform when given the opportunity. He said KNUST was committed to the human resource development of the country, stressing that the university had already taken the lead in that direction. Professor Andam said the restructuring of the university was to position itself adequately to respond to the current market demands of its products as well as the manpower needs of the nation.

He said the university has targeted to increase its students population to about 50,000 in the near future. Professor Andam said new lecturers had been appointed to boost the academic staff strength in some departments. He said an International Programmes Office had been established with a faculty status to strengthen its existing useful partnerships and discontinue those that were not useful, adding that, eight Memorandum of Understanding had been signed with some foreign institutions this year.