Professor Jane Naana Opoku-Agyeman, Minister of Education on Wednesday called for an urgent review of the programme content of tertiary education to solve graduate unemployment.
She said the country could boast of more than 114 tertiary educational institutions, and attracts 30 per cent of the country’s budget on education, hence the need for national interest in where the graduates end up.
The Education Minister said from 2011-2012 the budget for tertiary education was GH¢885.7 million and “the cost is skyrocketing”.
Prof Opoku-Agyeman made the call at a two-day National Policy Dialogue on Tertiary Education under way in Accra on the theme: “Repositioning Tertiary Education for National Development.
The event being organised by National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE) in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and TrustAfrica, Senegal is on the sub-themes: “ Tertiary Education and National Development,” “Access and Quality Assurance in Tertiary Education,” and “Governance and Funding of Tertiary Education.”
Prof Opoku-Agyeman noted that since independence the country had witnessed not less than 12 educational reforms and not too long ago the national focus was on basic education, explaining that dwelling only on one link of the academic chain was disastrous.
She said some of the problems confronting tertiary education are exposure of students to skills that do not march labour and expressed the hope that the dialogue would help confront all the challenges.
She said the transformation of the polytechnics into technical universities is a way of exposing students to the right skills for the job market and also serve the middle level manpower needs of the country to facilitate development.
Prof Opoku-Agyeman said the technical institutions would also translate research from the universities into tangible results that are relevant to the development needs of the country and serve as antidote for youth unemployment.
She said Ghana must make choices about what is important for national development.
The programme will provide an opportunity for stakeholders in education, industry, civil society and policy makers to dialogue on issues confronting quality and relevant tertiary education in Ghana to help reposition the sector and make it more responsive to the development needs of the 21st century.
The invited guests including academic luminaries locally and internationally will talk on the sub-themes that will be subject matters of policy documents.
In-depth papers will be developed from the conference themes to serve as source for policy briefs to the Minister of Education for consideration.
Some of the Sub-themes include: “National Vision for Tertiary Education,” “The Role of Tertiary Education in National Development,” “Quality Assurance in Tertiary Education: Implications for differentiations, diversification and graduate employment,” “Higher Education Transformation in Africa-Report on the Study on Ghana’s Higher Education System,” and “Governance of Tertiary Education Institutions.”
Professor Clifford Nii Boi Tagoe, Chairman of NCTE said since Ghana’s premier university- University of Ghana was established 65 years ago tertiary education had undergone tremendous transformation.
He said the progress made so far should march with the quality of the graduates produce, relevance of courses to national development and how it would address graduate unemployment.
Dr Omano Edigheji, Consultant/Advisor, Africa’s Higher Education Dialogues, TrustAfrica, Senegal, said the pursuit of higher education in Africa is fraught with poor quality content, poor funding and poor attention to research, the problem of brain drain, lack of public accountability and poor response to public needs.
He said rather than developing the individual, the attention of the tertiary institutions is focussed on market oriented courses.
Dr Edigheji said Africa have not been able to balance access to education with excellence and cannot relate education with innovation.
“We are therefore a continent of exporters instead of importers,” he added.
NCTE was established by Act, 1993 as a supervisory body of tertiary education in Ghana.