USAG calls for revision of tertiary academic curriculum

The University Student Association (USAG) has called on the Ministry of Education (MOE) and other stakeholders in academia to revise the academic curricular offered at tertiary educational institutions in the country.

This, it said, was because the current tertiary education curriculum, introduced about 30 years ago, is composed of modules that have no or little bearing on the practical and critical skills required to excel in the job market.

This was contained in a press statement read by Joshua Nana Otu Darko, Press Relations Secretary of USAG, at a press conference held on Thursday, as part of USAG’s 15th Annual Delegates’ congress.

It said the existing curriculum, which is supposed to fix the biases and industrial problems of the economy, has made little impact on the industrial front and it ought to be consistently revised to be abreast with changing global demands for the various programmes of study".

The statement said despite the rapid expansion of university enrolment, there were serious concerns about the ability of universities to produce the kind of graduates who can drive Ghana’s economy forward.

It also expressed doubt that the current academic standards of university education in the country was a researched based one and implored all major stakeholders to help assume a different phase.

Many stakeholders, including the Association of Ghana Industries and the Ghana Employers Association, the statement said, have bemoaned the poor connection between education in Ghana and the world of work.

These stakeholders, it said, also blame the aforementioned problem on “a grave mismatch between what is studied in the classroom and what is required to be delivered in the world of work”.

The revised curriculum, it said, should be devoid of “lot of theories that are non-applicable to Ghana" and replaced with courses in conformity with the country's culture and environment.

The statement also called on Government and other stakeholders to provide adequate funding and the right tools and facilities, such as teaching laboratories, to offer the required practical training for the student’s development.

It also expressed worry over what it described as the “use of the unproductive chew and pour syndrome way to adjudge best students, still being used by some lecturers in the tertiary institutions.

For instance, it said, students who fell below this so called standard and can answer questions from their own intelligence point of view though commiserating with the dictates of a lecturer’s question usually failed and hardly gets the class needed.

“If this trend is positively revisited it will strongly deter university students from joining national unemployment associations but rather augment the efforts of government through innovative and creative thinking to establish individual jobs."