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Ghana works to strengthen advanced technical education

Xinhua, November 3, 2016 Adjust font size:

Ghana's Minister of Education on Wednesday called on tertiary education authorities to attach greater importance to the skill sets acquired by graduates and the prospects for their employment.

"The country has invested tremendous resources in tertiary education over the years and we expect to see the investments turn into new knowledge, innovations and skill acquisition," Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang told participants at a national summit on tertiary education in Ghana.

The three-day summit has offered an opportunity for stakeholders to make recommendations to inform a draft national vision and plan for tertiary education in Ghana.

Prof. Opoku-Agyemang said Ghana had commenced the process to convert 10 polytechnics into technical universities to strengthen advanced vocational and technical education.

She said the technical universities would train and equip specialists with high level technical skills in engineering, science and technology and promote technology adaptation and innovation in support of local enterprises.

So far, eight polytechnics have been selected for the first phase of the conversion process in 2016 while the capacity of other two polytechnics is being built to qualify them for conversion.

The Executive Director of the National Council for Tertiary Education, Professor Mohammed Salifu, said technical universities would produce the skilled human resources for industry not just at the basic level.

"What this intervention is providing for is for people to stay within that technical and vocational education framework but have the clear pathway to develop themselves academically all the way to the highest academic potentials required," he told Xinhua.

A renowned educationist, Professor Jophus Anamuah-Mensah, said educating Ghanaian youth to thrive in this ever-changing complex globalized world would require a drastic transformation of the tertiary education system, its structure and how it operates.

The tertiary education terrain in Ghana has expanded drastically within the last two decades.

Currently, there are over 120 tertiary institutions in Ghana with a total of 333,817 students in the 2014/2015 academic year. Endit