Don't Politicize Polytechnic Education

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

The same issue has been raised regarding whether Ghanaian university professors deserve their research and book allowances. Now it is being raised at the polytechnic level (See "POTAG Against Scrapping of Research and Book Allowance" Citifmonline.com/Ghanaweb.com 8/18/13). It appears that somebody or a group of people in government is/are in doubt of the scholastic and professional abilities of Ghanaian tertiary educators.

If that is the case, then perhaps what needs to be done would be to have institutional administrators establish or redesign and implement new research standard requirements for these educators, if such supplemental salary payments are to be continued. For, it goes without saying that money is increasingly difficult to come by these days on the global economic front. In the case of Ghana, though, the problem has almost exclusively to do with wanton corruption in government and the reckless fleecing of taxpayers by politicians.

In sum, if the government is having a hard time meeting the basic professional needs of college and university educators and, indeed, civil servants, in general, it is because of such gratuitous and economically draining perks as the quadrennial "gratuities" offered parliamentarians and other political poker players, as it were. The government may also do the country and the Ghanaian taxpayer great good by drastically adjusting the salaries of personnel in management positions; for it clearly appears that much that is broken about the manner in which our human and capital resources are managed has squarely to blame for the present national economic dilemma.

Of course, many of us also recognize the problem to be chronic and perennial. Besides, the amounts involved in the payment of these professionally oriented allowances far pale in significance in comparison to such wanton and unconscionable capers as GYEEDA and the Woyome contretemps. And there is no remarkable evidence that putting a stop to these piddling payments to university and college educators would appreciably and/or positively impact our national coffers.

Needless to say, the establishment of a National Research Fund is another devious way for an uncomfortably and flagrantly cynical government to further renege on its primary responsibilities to Ghanaian educators and the general quality of the country's tertiary education. A National Research Fund would make better sense if it were established to cater to the academic and professional needs of public and elementary school educators; for quite a significant level of research and textbook development ought to happen among elementary and secondary and pre-K educators to ensure the direly needed upgrading of the country's education.

And this is essentialy why the call by distinguished Ghanaian academic administrators like Prof. Stephen Addai, formerly of GIMPA (or the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration), for the degree requirements of pre-K and elementary school teachers to be raised to the graduate level, ought to be promptly heeded and adopted by the Ministry of Education. For currently, the foundation of the country's public educational system is very weak and qualitatively unacceptable. And if the foundation of our public school system leaves too much to be desired then, it goes without saying that there is so much that is worthwhile that ought to be expected of our tertiary educators.

A National Research Fund, unless it is established by a statutory instrument requiring the same to be managerially independent, is highly likely to be manipulated by politicians and ideologically partisan operatives. And if that happens, we would be back to the proverbial status-quo-ante. And that would literally imply the unsavory creation of another GYEEDA scam. And that is clearly not the direction in which most levelheaded Ghanaian citizens would have the nation's educational system go.

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
August 18, 2013
E-mail: [email protected]
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