The Minister of Tertiary Education, Research, Science and Technology Dr Alfred Madigele says government sponsorship for prospective University of Botswana (UB) students has gone down because students are shunning the institution. Madigele was responding to a question by the Gaborone Central Member of Parliament Phenyo Butale in Parliament on Friday. Butale had wanted Madigele to brief the house on the long-term sustainability of UB as a public institution in the wake of recent cuts in students sponsored by government and the government’s failure to pay tuition fees to the university for many years. “Students are now shunning UB and prefer private tertiary institutions,” Madigele said. According to him, it is now an open secret that most UB graduates tend to excel extremely in theory but lack on the job skills and hence perform badly at the workplace because the university fails to inculcate apprenticeship among its students. This lack of exposure to the workplace by UB, according to Madigele, it would seem gives private institutions the upper hand over it, hence students end up choosing them over UB. Madigele maintained that his ministry has not occasioned any cuts with respect to the number of new students sponsored at the University…