Ghana is treading a dangerous path of endangering the quality of its human capital needed for sustainable development, considering the way and manner in which tertiary education is currently being administered.
This is the observation of Dr. Kwabena Donkor, former Minister for Power and an MP who is worried that the tertiary education system is dangerously drifting into a crisis that could cripple the nation’s human capital and stall national development.
He is therefore calling for a drastic rethink and resetting of tertiary education, which will align with the country’s socio-economic needs.
In an exclusive interview with The High Street Journal, Dr. Kwabena Donkor expressed concern over the impact of the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC), which is the very regulator mandated by law to safeguard quality, accredit programmes, and ensure tertiary institutions produce the skilled workforce needed to drive Ghana’s economy.
GTEC’s Mandate and the Gap
The Parliament of Ghana, through the GTEC Act, armed the Commission with very profound authority to ensure quality institutions of higher learning, accredit academic programmes, monitor standards, and advise the government on structuring tertiary education for sustainable national development.
“The commission’s responsibilities include the promotion of principles of the provision of consistent quality of service by tertiary education. Clause 2 of the Act also gives the commission the power to ensure the development of appropriate human capital for the sustainable advancement of the national economy,” Dr. Donkor quoted the GTEC Act.
Sadly, Dr. Donkor believes that these aspects of GTEC’s responsibilities have been more noticed in their absence than in their execution. This, he believes, has opened the floodgates for, especially public tertiary institutions to compromise the quality of the country’s education.
The Proliferation of Low-Quality Master’s Programmes
One of the most troubling trends Dr. Donkor pointed out is the mass production of low-quality master’s graduates. He is specifically concerned about how almost all the public universities are offering master’s programmes for just a duration of one year, in just weekends or evenings.
Citing examples from other advanced jurisdictions, a part-time master’s programmes take twice as long as its full-time counterparts. Two years instead of one, or four years instead of two.
Yet in Ghana, many universities are awarding weekend-only master’s degrees within a year, a practice he calls “an abnormality”. The situation, he partly attributes to the penchant of the universities to make money through Internally Generated Funds (IGF).
“We are mass producing students with supposedly master’s qualifications, but with no depth. They are running weekend and evening courses, master’s, with very little quality assurance,” he indicated.
He added, “How can any serious jurisdiction entertain a situation where students at the graduate level and at only weekends attend lectures, write exams, and come up with their master’s degrees in one year? It is an abnormality. And these decisions by public universities are IGF-driven. It’s just money-driven. They are in the business of making money. Universities have turned into open markets for making money at the expense of quality.”
The Impact: Quality Human Capital for National Development at Risk
Given the challenge, Dr. Kwabena Donkor is worried for the country’s socio-economic development. He is concerned that the current situation cannot produce the quality human resources for national development. Human capital, he argued, is the most critical driver of national development, more vital than natural resources.
Using examples like Singapore and the UAE, Dr. Donkor reminded Ghanaians that nations develop not by accident, but through deliberate investments in education and skills.
With Ghana’s universities churning out graduates of questionable depth and competence, the country risks building an economy on fragile foundations. Mediocre human capital, he warned, will only lead to mediocre outcomes in governance, industry, and innovation.
“One of the most critical skills in national development is human capital. Development is not accidental. It arises out of deliberate steps taken by a nation or by a people. Human capital is the first agent of development. Development starts from the intellect, and that is where human capital is far more critical today than natural resources,” he noted.
He added, “If we are creating substandard human capital, if we are content with mediocrity as a people, our outcomes will also be mediocre.”
Ghana Gradually Losing its Touted Premium Education
Dr. Donkor further expressed his worry about how Ghana is losing its touted premium education in the sub-region. The policymaker says the country is gradually sacrificing this heritage of premium education on the altar of generating money.
This deterioration, he insists, must be drastically curtailed.
“Traditionally, in the West African and African region, Ghanaian education has held such a premium. But we are, by our actions and inactions, withering away this premium. We are losing that because university administrations, and I use the plural because they cut across, are more interested in making money for the universities than providing quality research-based education that enhances national development,” he lamented.
The Way Forward: What GTEC Must Do
Dr. Kwabena Donkor says the situation calls for an urgent need for GTEC to refocus its mission and assert its statutory mandate. He recommends that the commission enforce rigorous quality assurance in all tertiary programmes, especially postgraduate studies.
He adds that they must curb the proliferation of money-driven weekend master’s programmes that undermine academic credibility. GTEC, he says, must also assert its mandate of advising the government on manpower planning, aligning tertiary output with the skills needed for national development.
The Bottomline
Dr. Donkor asserts that there is a direct link between the quality of a country’s socio-economic development and the quality of its human capital. A weak tertiary education system means a weak workforce; and a weak workforce means stalled development, wasted resources, and lost opportunities.
He calls on the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission, armed with the law and the mandate, must rise to the occasion. The nation, he says, cannot afford regulatory complacency at a time when human capital, not natural resources, is the engine of global competitiveness.
