Ghana’s Tainted Ivory Tower

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

I have often been amused by Ghanaian critics of my articles, on the various websites, who cavalierly presume to deride the fact that I teach at a community college in the United States. In the opinion of many of these critics, I am only the lower-class intellectual of a “glorified high school.” The fact that I possess comparable academic credentials with other American college and university educators, and administrators, alike does not the least bit seem to matter.

Likewise, the fact that I am remunerated substantially higher than many professors at big-name, or flagship, academies also does not appear to meaningfully register with these decidedly vicious critics.

Of course, this is largely due to these critics’ crass ignorance of the American labor market and the use/misuse of race as a potent political weapon. And here also must quickly be pointed out the fact that part of such smug ignorance has been contributed by some Ghanaian educators and professors of American community colleges who, perhaps as a result of being mordantly afflicted with “neocolonialist neurosis” – a.k.a. “colonial mentality” – have come to perceive their very professional association with community colleges as some sort of stigma or even an anathema.

During Ghana’s Election 2008, for instance, a retired professor at one of the eight, or so, community colleges that form a part of the world-renowned City University of New York (CUNY), and who succeeded in getting himself elected parliamentarian for his home district, against quite formidable odds, simply described himself as a “professor of the LaGuardia campus of the City University of New York.”

Then there is this colleague of mine, a two-time recipient of the Fulbright prize/scholarship, who continues to describe himself as a “professor of the Nassau campus of the State University of New York.” My esteemed colleague is wrong on two counts: First of all, like me, he is an “associate professor,” not a “full-professor,” as he stubbornly and deliberately causes himself to be perceived by generically and ambiguously styling himself as “a professor of the Nassau campus of the State University of New York.” Besides, there are, in reality, two separate and autonomously administered campuses of the State University of New York (SUNY) in the County of Nassau/Nassau County, the other and a four-year college being the SUNY campus at Old Westbury where, incidentally, my colleague once taught as an adjunct instructor or part-time lecturer.

Interestingly, I must also quickly add, my colleague and I have both discussed this issue of “benign misrepresentation” and gotten a good laugh, or kick, out of it, though I have consistently maintained that it is my academic and professional output – as well as impact on my students – that matters, not the institution in which I practice my trade.

Anyway, what provoked the foregoing is an article titled “Exam Scripts Gone Missing at Legon,” which appeared in the April 10, 2009 edition of MyJoyOnline.com, the official website of Ghana’s leading privately-owned radio station, Joy-Fm. “Legon,” of course, refers to Ghana’s flagship academy, the University of Ghana.

The article reported that the already-written exam scripts of some 200 sociology students had gone missing, the cause being what the reporter, Mr. Nathan Gadugah, described as a mix up with other papers by proctors. And while the examinees were apt not to be amused by such apparently careless proctoring, this author could not help but double up with laughter. For this is about the umpteenth time, in about as many years, that he has learned of either prepared or already-written examination papers literally vanishing into thin air at Legon.

In the latest incident, the head of the Sociology Department at the University of Ghana was reported to have asked the affected students to either re-take the exam or “settle for a pass[ing] mark.” Not surprisingly, many of the affected students were, reportedly, not the least bit amused. For one: taking the exam over, with a wholly new set of questions and a reprise of the attendant grueling student sessions, reads like an unpardonably bad joke, to speak less of an outright sadistic one. Which is why one could not but unreservedly agree with Mr. Enoch Amartey, acting director of academic affairs at the University of Ghana, that the call for the affected students to re-sit the stolen examination was premature. Instead, and appropriately so, Mr. Amartey announced the establishment of an investigative board to probe the matter.

Two, merely settling for a passing mark, or the letter-grade of “P,” while likely to be favored by poorly prepared students, unduly devalues the yeomanly efforts of the diligent ones. It also considerably vitiates their ability to evenly compete with their counterparts elsewhere, it being that merely receiving a passing grade stultifies one’s highly prized Grade-Point Average (GPA).

What piqued my interest, however, regards the fact that at the “glorified high school,” also called “thirteenth grade,” where I teach, there haven’t been more than two reported incidents in which something untoward has happened to student exam papers, either prepared exam packages or already-written exam scripts during the last dozen years that I have been on staff, hardly a single instance, to be certain.

In sum, you have every right to call me a “glorified high school” professor; but don’t you ever forget the fact that you also live in an embarrassingly “tainted Ivory Tower.” On a more frank note, though, these days, it is rather painful to observe that a degree from any of our major Ghanaian academies is hardly worth the piece of gilt-edged card paper on which it is engraved.

Does the foregoing, indeed, have anything to do with the country’s recent dismal 67th academic ranking among the group of 100 (one-hundred) top-ranked national educational systems around the globe?

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com. ###