Establishment of new universities must not be ethnic based - Vice-chancellor

Tamale, Dec. 14, GNA - Professor Kaku Sagary Nokoe, Acting Vice-Chancellor of the University for Development Studies (UDS) has cautioned the government to guard against ethnic considerations in the establishment of proposed new universities in the Brong/Ahafo and the Volta regions.

He said in the interest of national cohesion, the proposed new universities in the two regions should be free of ethnic considerations in all aspects of the planning and recruitment of staff and admissions of students.

Professor Nokoe, who gave the caution at the 10th Congregation of the UDS in Tamale on Saturday said: "De-boardinisation of secondary schools and automated admissions have already created problems relating to national identity, which need not to be cemented with regional-based universities". The VIce-Chancellor said the UDS started with a low intake of 39 students in September 1993 and the figure rose to 5,400 by the end of the 2004/2005 academic year, adding that in the last four years the student population had tripled to 15,019.

He said for this years Congregation, a total of 1,471 graduates spread over the four faculties had successfully passed all their requirements for the award of degrees.

Out of the figure, he said, 88 had received certificates in diploma programmes, 1,379 graduated with Bachelor degrees and four with Masters' degrees. At the degree level, 27 of those who performed excellently, earned First class degrees, while 363 attained second class (upper division) with 922 earning second class (lower division), whilst 59 of them got third class degrees.

President John Evans Atta Mills in a speech read for him by Dr. J.S. Annan, a Deputy Minister of Education called on the authorities of the UDS to collaborate with the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) to deal with development issues in the Savannah regions of the country. "As you preside over a community of scholars, I urge you to encourage both academics and non-teaching professional staff in the university to show keen interest in the strategies being developed as crucial stakeholders", President Mills said.

The President observed that the UDS had benefited from several infrastructural development projects with assistance from the GETFund and that government would continue supporting the university to enable it to expand access to university education in the northern part of the country. President Mills called on the new University Council of the UDS to speed up the appointment of a substantive Vice-Chancellor for the University, adding that, the position was an important one and that they needed to look for someone who would be able to provide strategic academic leadership for the UDS.

He also called on the Council to strive to fill all the key leadership positions in the university to provide the necessary direction for the university to grow and develop. Dr. Abdulai Salifu, Chairman of the Council appealed to the government to financially support the university to run its trimester system of education as it had been mandated by law to do. He said, the trimester system was not only energy-sapping but costly in terms of financial resources, adding that, it cost a lot of money to transport over 12,000 students every trimester to the communities to do their practical training. Dr. Salifu also urged the government to provide a 500 bed hostel for the medical students at the Tamale campus.