Ghana's higer education institutions are not job providers: A response to Dr. Ahmed Abdulai Jinapor

Recent accreditation and unaccreditation issues from the 2020/2021 Auditor General’s report have thrown the viability of some programs in Ghana’s higher education institutions into the limelight. Following the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission’s (GTEC) attempts to improve higher education, Dr. Ahmed Abdulai Jinapor, a deputy director of the commission, revealed plans to “scrap courses that don’t prepare students for the job market.”

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For him, these academic programs either have lost their value or have no added value because they do not make graduates entrepreneurs or employable. Dr. Ahmed made this claim during the 18th Congregation of the Koforidua Technical University (KTU).

To be fair, academic programs in higher education institutions have a practical utility component—providing cutting-edge knowledge and developing individual skills for comprehensive national development. However, practical utility is not the only criterion for evaluating the relevance of academic programs. The 1988 Declaration by UNESCO’s World Conference on Higher Education (cited in McCowan et al., 2016, p. 3) provided a concise description of the task of higher education:

Developing entrepreneurial skills and initiative should become major concerns of higher education, in order to facilitate employability of graduates who will increasingly be called upon to be not only job seekers but also and above all to become job creators. Higher education institutions should give the opportunity to students to fully develop their own abilities with a sense of social responsibility, educating them to become full participants in democratic society and promoters of changes that will foster equity and justice.

Higher education institutions are not creators of employment. Instead, they are ‘developers,’ ‘facilitators,’ providing opportunities for graduates to function effectively in an ever-changing, complex society. When this task is done, other society players are expected to 'call upon' these graduates for meaningful participation in all sectors of corporate society.

Dr. Jinapor’s claim to scrap some academic programs for deficiencies in practical utility is flawed for two reasons. First, other than practical utility, higher education programs have intrinsic value—high-level research and individual potential/initiative development. This inherent value is a sought-after capacity in a knowledge economy. Second, evaluating the efficacy of academic programs on graduate unemployability leaves much to be desired.

This is because society needs higher education institutions to design programs that would provide opportunities to develop individual full potential/initiative. No standardized student exists; each student enrolls in academic programs with peculiar needs and challenges. The question at the core of higher education institutions is, 'how can all students with diverse needs and challenges acquire knowledge and develop their potential for purposeful functioning in the larger society?'

Dr. Jinapor’s claim failed to rule out two possibilities likely to make academic programs deficient on the practical utility scale. First, an educational program with corresponding marketability might be redundant owing to unfavorable dynamism in the corporate world. The utility of these programs may bounce back when the corporate world favors their relevance. Second, an academic program may not have initial marketability because it provides graduates with groundbreaking knowledge and skill sets for future utility. Either way, using the practical utility knife to cut these programs off may not be in the best interest of Ghanaian society.

GTEC's gatekeeper role in the quality management of higher education is commendable. It will be more admirable if the commission enhances the platform for supporting higher education institutions to achieve their task. GTEC can suggest establishing a national fund to aid innovative research, especially in STEM education, to Ghana's government.

Also, GTEC can urge the government to initiate policies to facilitate partnerships between higher education institutions and industries in curriculum planning, design, implementation, and evaluation. Lastly, GTEC may facilitate periodic seminars on updating the contents of existing academic programs.

I believe higher education institutions must regularly update the contents of existing academic programs, evaluating their continued viability in Ghanaian society. However, simply cutting these programs off with the knife of practical utility should be replaced with functional evaluative criteria.