President Mahama approves recruitment of more Lecturers

President John Dramani Mahama on Saturday announced that government had approved for recruitment a total of 1,018 academic staff for all the public universities in the country.

He said he had tasked the Public Services Commission, to prepare the necessary documents to facilitate its implementation to beef up the academic staffing of the institutions.

President Mahama announced this during the Eighth congregation of the University for Professional studies in Accra.

The University, formerly Institute of Professional Studies, was established in 1965 as a private institution and was taken over by the Government in 1979.

The institute's Act 1999 (566) was enacted by Parliament, which transformed it into a tertiary institution with the mandate to offer professional programmes in the disciplines of Accountancy and Management leading to the award of degrees and Diploma certificates.

On September 1, 2008, the Institute attained a fully-fledged university status and was renamed.

President Mahama said government would continue to invest in educational projects throughout the country to ensure growth and development as it serves as the bedrock of development.

He commended the management and staff of the University for the internally generally funded projects.

President Mahama called on the graduands to think beyond the box by establishing their own businesses rather than seeking non-existent jobs in the public sector.

Professor Joshua Alabi, Vice Chancellor of the University said the enrollment levels of the academic entity had moved from 4,000 to almost 12,000 students from 2009 to 2015 and gave the assurance that the enrollment figures could be increased to 15,000 by 2017.

He said the school is recruiting a total of 118 academic staff as its share of the total recruitment government is making for public universities.

The Vice Chancellor said the University had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with World Vision International and other partners to educate small and medium enterprises to become viable in the coming years.

Prof Bosso Adamtey I, Chancellor of the University said the academic institution would leverage information, Communication and Technology to make it one of the best in the continent.

In all a total of 2,575 students made up of 1,836, undergraduates, 421, post graduate students and 318 diploma students graduated.