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Minister of State in-charge of Tertiary Education, Professor Kwesi Yankah
Minister of State in-charge of Tertiary Education, Professor Kwesi Yankah

‘Sweeping tertiary education reforms in the offing’

The Minister of State in-charge of Tertiary Education, Professor Kwesi Yankah, has hinted of sweeping reforms in the tertiary education sector, which will ensure that the current system of mentoring and affiliation are abolished.

“Indeed, sweeping reforms in tertiary education are underway and are waiting to be announced. Government is in search of viable alternatives to the current system of mentoring and affiliation which will soon be abolished,” he said.

 At the joint 15th Congregation/24th Matriculation of the Catholic University College of Ghana, Fiapre last Saturday, Prof. Yankah said review committees, which had been set up towards the reforms had virtually finished their reports.

According to him, the reports had reviewed accreditation processes, policies in the setting up of universities, the efficacy of mentoring as currently practised, as well as inequalities in the laws as applied to private and public universities.

Prof. Yankah said the more fundamental issue had to do with mentoring policies in the country where private universities had to be taken through unnecessarily long periods of mentoring under a public university and where new programmes were subjected to double approval processes by the mentor and then the National Accreditation Board (NAB).

“Indeed, sooner or later, those impediments specifically mounted to frustrate private universities will be a thing of the past,” he declared.

Discrimination

Prof. Yankah said it was unfortunate that private universities in the country suffered discrimination as being tagged as “university colleges” meaning that they were not mature enough to be called fully fledged universities.

“Unlike new public universities, these have been blacklisted by policy and do not offer degrees of their own. They are accredited but immature toddlers operate under fully-fledged public universities”.

“In certain cases, a new programme whose package is ready to be mounted sees the light of the day after three or four years. By the time the new course is approved, the situation on the job market, targeted by the new innovative programme have changed, making the new programme obsolete, by default,” he bemoaned.

Prof. Yankah noted that rather than encouraging innovations and jobs, our policies rather applied penalties on institutions for attempting to be innovative and attempting to speedily create jobs for the youth.

He, therefore, called for a holistic agenda to change the negative perception of private universities in the country “an agenda that simply prepares students for the job market and gives them the edge to get jobs”.

Worries

Prof. Yankah, however, expressed worry about the mushrooming of universities throughout the country with low standards and called for the situation to give way to new and enduring universities, which had been well thought through by their founders.

“As I speak now, the Ministry of Education has directed a clampdown on tertiary institutions which are operating illegally, and without accreditation from the National Accreditation Board,” he hinted, adding that “these are institutions that have given private universities a bad name all these years, and still operate with Impunity”.

He said what was worrisome was that many universities that were unable to endure the current climate of competition in the tertiary sector had decided to cut corners to cheat the system by admitting candidates who did not satisfy the minimum requirement for admission to universities.

Prof. Yankah said the NAB was currently undertaking an admission auditing, and universities found to be admitting unqualified candidates would be severely sanctioned.

New law school

In his address, the Vice-Chancellor of the CUCG, Prof. Daniels Obeng-Ofori, announced that plans were far advanced for the establishment of a Law School known as the Mirian Law School.

He explained that the school would be committed to the incorporation of conflict resolution skills generally and specifically alternative dispute resolution principles in the study of law both within Ghana and in all cross-border legal skill development.

Prof. Obeng-Ofori also announced that the governing council of the CUCG had given approval for the establishment of an entrepreneurship innovation centre to create an avenue for support and promotion of entrepreneurship and innovation among students within the catchment area of the university.

In all 820 students were awarded degrees under the various programmes being offered by the university while 322 students matriculated.

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