Review retirement age of lecturers – Sam Jonah

The Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast (UCC), Sir Dr. Sam Esson Jonah, has requested the government to revisit the directives that mandate university faculty members to retire at 60 years.

“It should not be in doubt that at 60 [years], senior members of faculty will then have attained a high level of intellectual maturity and are better able to mentor young members of faculty and provide guidance and supervision to research students,” he said.

Speaking at the first session of the 50th congregation and induction ceremony of University of Cape Coast School of Medical Sciences held on Saturday, August 12th, 2017 at its North Campus, Dr. Jonah noted that it is unfortunate under the current policy to lose such seasoned members of faculty to the open arms of the private tertiary institutions.

According to him, another major challenge confronting the university is its inability to recruit new staff to fill vacancies meant to correct the wider lecturer-student ratio as well as improve quality teaching and research.

He, therefore, appealed to government to consider as a matter of urgency, the request made by the various public institutions of higher learning for financial clearance to recruit adequate numbers of teaching and non-teaching staff.

Dr. Jonah said UCC is constrained by severely inadequate infrastructure due to scarce financial resources to complete its projects.

In his view, despite their efforts, a lot of the structures remain uncompleted as a result of resource constraints which have militated against the capacity of the school to increase enrollment.

Dr. Jonah, therefore, made a passionate appeal to the government and all stakeholders for support towards the early completion of the facilities.

Dr. Jonah hinted that funds received from the central government are inadequate to curb the infrastructural deficit forcing them to rely more on their internally generated fund.

“Our internally generated funds have become the lifeline used by this university to provide critical infrastructure and other resources required for effective teaching, research and the operating cost of the university,” he said.

In this regard, he discouraged the government’s directive requesting universities to contribute 34 per cent of their internally generated funds to the consolidated fund adding that, it can stifle creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship.