Garden City University College holds ninth congregation
The government is working assidiously towards the removal of the 25 per cent corporate tax slapped on private universities in 2013, Minister of State in charge of Tertiary Education, Professor Kwesi Yankah, has announced.
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He said the government was initiating policies that would lift impediments created by the past government to drive the private sector out of market.
Speaking at the ninth congregation of the Garden City University College (GCUC) at Kenyasi near Kumasi, Prof. Yankah noted that such nuisance taxes deterred private universities from investing any surplus in growth, expansion and innovation.
A section of the graduands seated at the ceremony at Kenyasi.
“This stifles further investment in education and makes it difficult for private universities to avoid fee increases," he added.
Misconceptions
Prof. Yankah condemned the misconception that private universities were self-centred and not established for public good.
“Nobody establishes a school or an educational centre to serve a private end. Education is a public good. It forms the basis of an informed society that comes to terms with the world around it, and eventually seeks to better the living conditions of the society in which it operates," he noted.
Prof. Yankah added that highly ranked universities such as Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, Pennsylvania, were all private universities.
That notwithstanding, the minister charged the National Accreditation Board (NAB) to ensure that all private universities were certified and that those which fell below standard should be closed down.
Job creation
He said President Akufo-Addo’s government was going all out in creating more opportunities for the teeming unemployed youth.
According to him, the government was aware of the struggles students endured after graduating from school, and urged all to exercise restraint as it worked to find a lasting solution to this social menace.
Administration
The President of GCUC, Dr Wilhelmina J. Donkoh, said the prime objective of the university was to equip their products with employable skills to enable them to become relevant in the competitive market.
She stressed the need for a pragmatic collaboration between industry and academia to create job opportunities for the ever-increasing graduates.
In view of the fast-changing and highly competitive world, she said, the university was pursuing more flexible career paths to equip students with entrepreneurial skills to enable them to create employment avenues for themselves.
" Aside curriculum activities, our students are given training in basic communication skills to express thoughts, ideas, feelings and aspirations, as well as critical thinking, initiative-taking among others," she noted.
Dr Donkoh announced that 92 per cent of the first batch of Physician Assistant graduates from the university, passed the licensure examination organised by the Dental Medical Council.
She said the success story was that almost all of them entered the programmes without earlier background training but added that, through the professional tuition they had acquired, they would deliver quality health care.
Dr Donkoh reiterated that the University College would continue its dynamic process of constantly reviewing its degree programmes, course contents, as well as the mode of delivery.
She hinted that plans were far advanced for the university to introduce evening and sandwich degree programmes to cater for the working class in the next academic year.
Owing to its focus on healthcare programmes, the president said management was in the process of setting up a medical centre on campus to provide practical training to the students and appealed to philanthropists and other interested parties in the health sector to come on board and make it a reality.
International collaborations
Dr Donkoh noted that in an effort to make GCUC a centre of academic excellence, it had formed international linkages with reputable institutions, including Old Dominion University in Virginia, University of Minnesota in Minneapolis,USA, Edinburgh Napier University, the University of Skove,Sweden, as well as Texas A & M University in the USA.
Those collaborations, she said, covered the areas of staff development, collaborative research, mounting of joint academic and mentoring programmes.
Corporate Social Responsibility
The GCUC president said the institution would soon award scholarships to brilliant, needy students who wished to pursue programmes in business, computer science, economics, environmental science, information technology, mathematics and statistics.
That, she said, would cover students with aggregate Six to 10 who chose GCUC as their preferred institution.
She added that other exciting packages also awaited students who went through GCUC's non-tertiary programmes and decided to further their studies to the tertiary level.
According to her, the university had also supported the local community in which it operated with donations of computers to schools and had engaged residents in several outreach programmes, spearheaded by staff and students of the Faculty of Applied Science and Health Sciences of the college.
Commendation
Dr Donkor hailed the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, for his instrumental contribution which she admitted had brought much laurels to the university.
She also commended the board and academic staff of the GCUC for their immense contribution towards the realisation of the vision and mission of the college.
Also in attendance at the 9th graduation was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Kwabre East Constituency, Ms Francisca Oteng Mensah; the youngest MP in Ghana's Parliament.