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Nqobile Tshili, Chronicle Correspondent
GOVERNMENT has directed experts and academics to prove their worth through providing solutions to societal challenges instead of only bragging about their bookish qualifications.

In an interview, Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development Minister Professor Amon Murwira said many professionals find pleasure in being labelled using their paper qualifications but fail to practically prove their worthiness.

“If you have a fraudulent PHD, You will never use it to produce that is why we discover that it’s fraudulent. Even if you got your degree with a distinction from the University of X, we know whether your degree is good or fake, not by the certificate but by the way you do things,” said Prof Murwira.

“So the way we must define our education these days, fake people are like traditional beer (umqombothi), the good beer will go through the sieve, the bad one will remain on top. Time to judge people by simple papers is gone. People are judged by innovation and industrialisation, that is when we will know whether your qualification is fake or not.”

Prof Murwira said the period where an individual would brag about being the only one with certain qualifications should be a thing of the past. “We have to re-examine ourselves. During a certain period it used to be cool to say I’m the only one, why are you the only one? What happened to others? Because you really can’t tell me that you can lift this country on your own. We need to open our systems so that we teach people within the systems, don’t close them out,” he said.

The Minister said the standardisation of qualifications framework at higher and tertiary institutions is meant to give credibility to the country’s education sector.

“In order for all these systems to work very well, our teachers, our teachings, our lecturers, our professors should be top notch. For them to be top notch we must work towards top notch, levels not labels,” said Prof Murwira, while noting that the country still has few skilled workers.

“We don’t have enough professors, we don’t have enough doctors, we don’t have enough experts, let me tell you on the natural sciences, engineering, health sciences and so forth, we have an average deficit of 95 percent in skills.” — @nqotshili.