Professor Elsie Effah Kaufmann spoke on Ghana's education system
A video of Professor Elsie Effah Kaufmann sharing her views on Ghana's education system has resurfaced online as discussions continue over former Education Minister Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum's "useless degrees" remark.
In the video, which was sighted by GhanaWeb on July 10, 2026, the academic criticised the country's education system for placing more value on memorisation than creativity, innovation, and practical thinking.
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She said this method of teaching has not produced graduates with the skills needed to drive Ghana's development.
To support her argument, Professor Kaufmann recalled taking her engineering students to hospitals, where they asked doctors and other health professionals whether they would be confident using medical equipment designed and produced in Ghana.
"I have taken my students on field trips to hospitals where we asked the question; 'If we were to produce some of the medical devices you are using in Ghana right now, would you use them?' We were told point blank, 'No. How can we know that they work?'" she said.
According to her, Ghana's education curriculum does not do enough to promote creativity, critical thinking and exploration among students.
"We have curricula that don't encourage exploration and problem-solving," she stated.
She further criticised an examination culture that rewards memorisation rather than practical ability.
"I was talking to some of my past students and they told me that, for one of their courses, they had to memorise 40 equations. If you successfully do that, you get an A and a beautiful certificate," she stated.
"They have been programmed to respond to a reward system that rewards rote learning. We take the best, and the best means the people who can memorise the most," she added.
Professor Kaufmann argued that this mindset influences students' career choices, with many of the highest-performing students pursuing medicine by default, while others enter engineering without a genuine interest in the field.
"The best students are pushed to go to medical school. The next best thing about engineering when they don't get into medical school. They come with no true passion for engineering," she said.
She added that the system often overlooks students with practical skills in favour of those who excel at memorisation.
"We will pick the best students who know how to memorise over a student who actually knows how to do something," she indicated.
The professor emphasised that Ghana's education system is not producing the kind of graduates the country needs and that innovation is often not encouraged even when it emerges.
"We have an education system that does not produce what we want, and yet we are uninterested or unable to get it to produce what we want. So, we wind up producing engineers who don't engineer. In fact, I'm not expecting them to engineer because, if they did, nobody would be interested in their engineering," she stated.
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The video has resurfaced as discussions continue over the value of university education, graduate employability, and the need to reform the education system to better prepare students for the job market and national development.
MAG/VPO
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