Students shying away from banking, finance courses

Students of the Valley View University are either shunning or avoiding a programme in Banking and Finance since Ghana's banking crises broke.

For the first time in the 40-year history of the university, none of the 388 newly admitted students at last Thursday's matriculation at the Kumasi Campus opted for banking and finance which, hitherto, was one of the flagship programmes ran by the Seventh-Day Adventist institution.

The worrying trend has compelled the Acting Rector of the university, Dr Emmanuel Bismarck Amponsah, to make a passionate appeal to the Bank of Ghana and other relevant bodies to help restore confidence in the financial services sector.

Dr Amponsah was addressing the 24th matriculation of the university but the second for Kumasi Campus which also coincided with the school's 40th anniversary celebration at Kwadaso in Kumasi.

"There are government policies or decisions that are deliberately sinking the private sector apart from killing our banking and finance programmes," he said.

Levelling a litany of allegations against the government, the Acting Rector said private institutions helped to lighten the burden on the government and it was, therefore, incomprehensible how the government could take decisions to intentionally kill such institutions.

For instance, he said, it was difficult to understand why the government could reject trained teachers with three years diploma certificate and employ untrained teachers to handle students at the senior high school level.

He said much as the government policy of engaging only degree holding teachers to handle such students, to what extent was it prepared to grant study leave to the tens of thousand of such teachers?

He said the double standards being expressed by the government was amazing while it was unwilling to engage diploma holding certificate teachers, it was ready to employ untrained teachers.

Govt’s stance on PTAs

Dr Amponsah urged the government to revisit the issue of Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) becoming optional to parents.

He said by so doing, the government was indirectly shunning help from the associations which could be detrimental to the development of the schools.

The Acting Rector said contributions by the PTA were crucial to the survival of schools because the government alone could not shoulder all the responsibilities.

New programmes

The Vice-Chancellor for Valley View University, Prof. Daniel Kwame Bediako, announced the introduction of seven new programmes including MBA Accounting and MPhil Curriculum and Instruction.

He said the university had work-study programmes intended to instil the passion for physical work in students and to provide opportunities for students to support themselves financially.