‘Tertiary education must not be preserve of elite’

A former Vice Chancellor of the University of Education, Winneba, Professor Josephus Anamuah-Mensah, says efforts to make Ghana a higher middle-income country  will be unrealistic if access to tertiary education remains elitist.

He noted that currently, access to tertiary education as measured by the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) is 12 per cent, which meant that a large number of talents lay dormant and uncultivated to contribute to the country’s prosperity.

Prof. Anamoah-Mensah said there was, therefore, the need to increase the percentage to about 30 to be able to move the nation beyond the lower middle-income status.

 “There is a higher education demand surge but many Ghanaians are deprived of tertiary education, only 12 per cent of post-secondary school graduates get access to the university. We are struggling to move beyond the lower middle income but the figure is too low for a higher middle-income status,” he said.

Easter forum

Prof. Anamuah-Mensah said this when he delivered the keynote address at the maiden annual Easter forum organised by the College of Distance Education (CoDE) of the University of Cape Coast (UCC) last Saturday.

The forum, which was on the theme: “Distance education: Our hope for a sustained human capacity development in Ghana,” addressed issues concerning distance education.

Distance education

Prof. Anamuah-Mensah said, “Distance education is the best alternative to addressing the problem of limited access to tertiary education as it offers the working populace the opportunity to improve upon their knowledge in the workplace.” 

He said with 49.3 per cent of the total number of teachers at the basic school level being untrained, distance education would obviously be the recommended option for them if they wanted to go to school while they remained in the classrooms.

The former vice chancellor urged the organisers of distance education programmes to put in place employable skills courses that were work-based and expand their scope to introduce technical and vocational programmes.

Flexible education

The Vice Chancellor of UCC, Professor D. D. Kuupole, said distance education, since its inception in 1994, had become embedded in the country’s educational sector and called on all to embrace it.

He said distance education made higher education flexible and offered a larger number of people the opportunity to enrol in any programme.

He said the discussions, sharing of ideas and innovations that might come up during the forum would go a long way to make advancement in the distance learning programmes.

Heads of colleges of education, education administrators, teachers, university dons and the Director of CoDE, Prof. George Oduro, were present at the one-day forum.  - GNA.