That private tertiary institutions have come in to fill a void that nearly became a national crisis cannot be denied. At the time when there were only three public universities to admit the thousands of students churned out by our secondary schools, it was the setting up of private tertiary institutions which absorbed the excess candidates and gave our educational authorities some semblance of respite.
But it appears that the private tertiary institutions themselves have come with their own problems which, if not addressed early, will create more problems for the country.
At the fourth anniversary of the inauguration of the Conference of Heads of Private Universities in Ghana (CHPUG) in Accra recently, the Minister of Education, Mr Alex Tettey-Enyo, himself a very seasoned educationist, drew attention to one of the problems associated with the private universities when he charged them to venture more into the areas of science and technology, as well as technical and vocational education and training, areas which he described as being “critical for national development”.
There are more than 50 private universities in the country and the dominant courses pursued in these institutions are Business Management, Theology, Computer Science, Marketing and Social Sciences, with very little emphasis on science and technology and vocational training which, to a very large extent, are what the country needs now.
It is about time the National Accreditation Board (NAB) put in place a policy that will compel private tertiary institutions to gear their courses towards national aspirations, so that they don’t train graduates who will only come to swell the already high levels of unemployed graduates.
The country looked on helplessly when the University of Cape Coast, which had been set up by Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah to train teachers for our secondary schools, veered off course to take on courses that have nothing to do with the core objective of the university.
The result of that is the many vacancies in the classrooms in our second-cycle schools all over the country.
The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology suffered the same fate when it took on board courses which have nothing to do with its science and technology mandate.
Another concern we have with the private tertiary institutions is their over-concentration in Accra and their conspicuous absence in the hinterlands.
While we agree that Accra has the largest concentration of people in the country, we also believe that the private universities should spread their tentacles to other parts of the country to send tertiary education to the doorstep of the people.
There is a sense in which we can also say that the number of private tertiary universities — 50 and over — is too high for a country of about 23 million people.
There must be a policy to regulate the setting up of those institutions, so that we do not have them mushrooming all over the city in make-shift structures, instead of proper facilities.
The Daily Graphic thinks what has happened in the telecom sector, where there are already six companies operating in the country, should not be allowed to happen in the educational sector because we cannot and must not toy with the education of our people because we may not be able to regulate the huge number of tertiary institutions.
There is a similar problem in the broadcast industry where the airwaves were liberalised before the stakeholders woke up to the reality of a broadcasting law to regulate the operations of radio stations.
We welcome private universities, but we believe that if their courses and where they are established are regulated, they will serve the country and its people much better.
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