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Provide more funding for research

The Pro-Vice Chancellor of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Professor Nii Odai, has called on the government to provide adequate funding to ensure the progress of postgraduate education.

Adequate funding, he said, would enable postgraduate candidates to spend more time to develop the subject matter of their programmes, and added that that would be the only way to produce the critical mass of professionals to manage tertiary institutions.

Prof. Odai was speaking at the opening of a two-day 19th annual delegates congress of the Graduate Students Association of Ghana (GRASAG), which was held in Kumasi on the theme: “The dynamics of post-graduate education in Ghana: Prospects, Challenges and Sustainable Development”.

He said funding was the “umbilical cord of university research” and that in many countries, apart from government funding for research, there were so many opportunities for contract research from industries and agencies in addition to individual endowments and funding agencies.

He noted that the lack of funding was among other challenges affecting postgraduate education.

Prof. Odai, who also represented the Vice Chancellor of the KNUST, Prof. William Otoo Ellis, said the undergraduate degree was actually not adequate for one to survive in the competitive job market.

He called on government to support GRASAG in executing projects and programmes that would enable postgraduates to realise the vision of living in a better society.

He, however, appealed to government to take thesis findings done by graduate students seriously and have a policy on post- graduate education.

The National President of GRASAG, Mr Augustine Nkrumah, said graduate students undertook research as part of the requirements of their degree, and added that on completion of their postgraduate education, graduates became the forces which stimulated development or change in the country.

By Joseph Kyei-Boateng/Daily Graphic/Ghana

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