The 2008 New Year School opens on Friday, January 4. The 59th edition of the event would critically examine how well tertiary education could be made to respond to challenges of national development. The school, an annual event organised by the Institute of Adult Education (IAE) of the University of Ghana, is on the theme: "Tertiary Education and National Development" and would bring together participants from all over the country to deliberate and come out with valuable suggestions to reposition tertiary education. Their suggestions would also inform policy makers to prescribe strategies that would make it a focal point in the effective transformation of the country into a middle income level by the year 2015. In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, Mr Ishmael Wilson Parry, Director of the New Year School, said due to the social demand for higher education, the Institute saw the need to throw a searchlight on Ghana's tertiary education system to find out the crucial role it had played in national development. He said the establishment of the country's six public universities and a myriad of private universities, polytechnics, teacher and nursing training colleges and distance learning centres was not only to provide the skills necessary for the labour market but also the training that was essential to develop the capacity and analytical skills that drove the national economy. Mr Parry said the IAE was founded in 1948 as the Department of Extra-Mural Studies and had been engaged in University based adult education throughout the country ever since. He said among its duties was to service the community, which included training for adult literacy work, public lectures and residential schools such as the New Year and the Easter schools. This year's school ends on January 10. Source: GNA