Making the case for the University Ghana (UG): Progress is being made to put UG on a powerful growth trajectory.
Recent
News:
University of
Ghana receives funding for PhD training
Then
someone asked:
Does the
University of Ghana have the capacity at the present time, in terms of human
resources, to offer a serious PhD programme in any department of the
university? From what anecdotal evidence I have of the quality of some of its
graduate programs, I doubt that very much. Why not focus on arresting the
decline in the quality of its undergraduate and masters programs, instead of
making this big leap into PhD training.
Here is
my take:
I work
there and I know that we have unused capacity for PhD training. If you
understand the university system worldwide, it will be easier for you to link
the quality of undergraduate programmes and PhD training. UG has so many
top-rate faculty members who are not training the number of PhDs they deserve
to. The teaching load issue is only in
a few courses NOT the whole University. The
output of the University is actually a question to society, parents, and basic
education, not just the university. You do not put just anyone in a University
and expect wonders; the people must be prepared and ready.
A case in
point is the year-to-year change in student learning power, which is just
shocking. In one year you have 50% easily getting first class; truly genius. In
the end not all maintained their first class but at some stage in their
training 50% were above that mark. With almost zero re-sits. The very next year
you have a class that re-sits so many papers and that is the picture. The vast majority of people coming into the
University are unsuitable and unprepared and that
is the critical point. You cannot force people not to be excellent, if they are
that good it will show. UG is on a
powerful growth trajectory. Ghanaian should support. Many international
agencies are pushing some resources.
The
fortunes of UG have suffered at some point in its history, things got critical
in 2006 at UG but things have long turned around and the institution is much
stronger now. The new funding programme is designed to make UG a Pan-African
Doctoral Training Academy. The same funder, the Carnegie Foundation is already
supporting a programme called "UG-Diaspora linkage programme".
Several Ghanaian scholars working abroad have spent 1-2 years teaching and doing
research at UG. So it not true that this programme is tailor made for diaspora
people to get a Ph.D in African Studies at UG.
UG is
determined to grow and there are several positive developments. Please spread
the news and also check the homepage regularly for news and facts. Those using
one-off situations to make a broad representation can use some more
information. These international agencies that are providing funding to UG will
not knowingly throw money away if UG is not unto something positive.
It is not
a case of pretending that the UG is doing just fine. We all know full well that
the University has a long way to go. What we all need to understand is that the
University is the baby of the society. If we all want to reap where we do not
sow, how can we build a world-class university? Many units of the University are
doing very very well. Noguchi Memorial Institute for Biomedical Research (built
with Japanese money, operates with grants from US, UK, Swiss, Denmark, etc
etc). Noguchi actually now operates off the ECG grid, why? The Japanese Government
installed a solar farm. Other units doing very well are the School of Public
Health, Economics Department, Earth Sciences Department, Law Faculty, School of
Communication Studies, UG Business School, Regional Institute of Population
Studies (RIPS), Institute of Social, Statistical and Economic Research (ISSER),
etc etc. Not to leave out my own Department of Biochemistry, Cell and Molecular
Biology. Do you know about the two new World Bank funded African centres of
excellence (ACE) WACCI and WACCBIP? UG was the only University in West and
Central Africa that won two of the fifteen World Bank ACE. And WACCBIP is
brainchild of the Department of Biochemistry, Cell and Molecular Biology. We
cannot claim these are all BAD news? Problems still, yes, there are more out there
but so much is also happening and we need to be grateful and keep growing. There
are many game changing developments on the University of Ghana campus and I see
this University finally spearheading the development of Ghana in a very
significant way. So for me I am encouraged to do my best and I want to let the
world know that.
To mention that
the university should focus on its strengths which in African studies is very
wrong. A big University of 30,000 students should be strong only in its African
Studies Department? Oh please. No University is built on a single department or
even a single faculty. There is so much to the University than the snippets of
anecdotes being relied on by most people in the appraisal of the University’s
performance. It’s
interesting to be asking whether anyone thinks UG has the capacity for the 30,000.
It’s actually not the choice of UG to have 30,000. Ghana does not have the higher
education institutional capacity for its youth. That is the problem here. So
there is pressure on the few existing ones to take in more. It’s all a function
of the society we are in today. And the capacity must be built and UG will not
just sit there and hope that one day the capacity will appear. I have already stated a number of initiatives aimed at building more capacity to buttress this
point. There are still many people incessantly posing the question:
whether it was not better for UG to concentrate its limited resources to build
a strong faculty to deliver improved undergraduate training? But here is the
case where the answer to this question is in the question itself. You
cannot have improvements in the calibre of faculty of a university when there
is no graduate work at the PhD level. PhD level graduate work is the engine of
academic progress and the generation of new knowledge. You cannot separate the
two. It does not happen anywhere in the world. UG has many elements aligned
now for a major lift off, to show the way for progress for Ghana and Africa.
Patrick Kobina Arthur (PhD) || parthur14@gmail.com || http://pakar1-corner.blogspot.com/
