Technical universities urged to stick to their mission, mandate

A Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) expert and consultant, Dr George Afeti, has advised the management of technical universities to enforce their mandate of providing hands-on and practical skills for students to meet the needs of the labour market to promote Ghana’s developmental agenda.

That, he said, was because recent developments and evidence had indicated a systemic shift and deviation from such mandate as an attempt to measure up to the traditional universities.

“What we need to do is recalibrate and enforce the mission and the mandate of technical universities because there appears to be some deviation, which should not be the case,” he stressed.

Dr Afeti gave the advice in a presentation at a policy dialogue on the conversion of polytechnics to technical universities.

Event

The maiden discussion, held in Accra yesterday, was organised by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (GAAS) as part of a series of dialogues on its higher education project.

The project, funded by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, is to deliberate on ways aimed at

“Motivating Higher Education Reforms in Ghana - Towards Equity and Sustainability” and to present recommendations to policy makers.

The discussion brought together selected stakeholders from academia, industry, government, civil societies, as well as vice-chancellors of technical universities, to assess and brainstorm on various aspects of the policy.

Recommendations

Dr Afeti noted that running practical and vocational programmes was expensive and called on the government to provide adequate funding for technical universities to boost their
capacity to meet their goal of preparing students with the requisite skills for the world of work.

He also urged regulatory agencies, such as GTEC and CTVET, to ensure that technical universities pursued their core programmes and called for the design and implementation of a national policy that would clearly differentiate technical universities from the traditional ones

“Also, technical universities should be limited to awarding HND, B.Tech and M.Tech, so that after we have decided that the M.Tech people have been well received by the industry, if they eventually want to look at the Doctor of Technology, they can do that,” he added.

Significance

The President of GAAS, Professor Kofi Opoku Nti, noted that the discussion was to provide a platform for independent people and groups to reflect on the challenges of the high educational sector on a regular and sustainable basis.

He added that the academy hoped to bring together different stakeholders to undertake reviews of current policies and inject independent research facilities to inform new policy considerations.