Dr Kwame Boakye, Chair of the Governing Council, Sunyani Technical University, has called for tertiary education curriculum and administration to be matched to the specific knowledge and skills requirements of Ghana’s national development agenda.
He said most tertiary education institutions in the country were running generic skills education and training instead of focusing on the specifics of nation building and development.
Dr Boakye made these remarks during a panel discussion on the topic “Relations Between the State and Public Universities in Ghana.”
The event, organised by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (GAAS), is the sixth in a series of Policy Dialogues on Motivating Higher Education Reforms in Ghana.
The project seeks to gather evidence, share information and provide a platform for building consensus and contributing to policy formulation on higher education in Ghana.
Dr Boakye said the operation of tertiary education institutions should be geared towards the building of the human capital for national development.
He urged the state to support and partner tertiary institutions to develop research and programmes in line with the national development needs.
Dr Boakye urged tertiary institutions to provide career guidance for their students to know what they could gain from their course of study.
Prof. Mamudu Akudugu, National President of the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG), said the state should recognise the universities as national stakeholders in development and engage them in their policy formulation and development plans.
He said the expertise of universities were not properly utilised by governments in their activities.
Prof. Nana Akua Anyidoho, a consultant on the policy dialogue, urged public universities to reduce dependence on government subvention through increasing their internally generated funds.
“Public universities should promote the capacity of their university leadership to meet the challenges of the time,” she added.
Emerita Prof. Takyiwaa Manuh, Chairperson, GAAS Project Management Committee, said the project examined the past, present and future reforms in the higher education sector and offered a platform for open and objective discussions.
She said at the end of the project, an international conference would be held to share the findings with local and international stakeholders to learn from comparative experiences.
