By Dr. Charles Addo
The Ministry of Education in Ghana has recently announced its intention to elevate all polytechnics in the country, one in each of the 10 regions of Ghana, to university status. This article explains why we should keep polytechnics. Polytechnics were created to fulfill a special purpose in macroeconomic development?for students who wish to learn practical subjects, such as construction, carpentry, or mechanics; rather than leaving those important areas to JHS level educated individuals or even dropouts who, by their limited formal academic training, cannot efficiently infuse theory and innovation into those areas like people with much higher levels of education.
So there is a clear purpose for creating polytechnics in the first place, and if one wants to transfer to a traditional tertiary institution, one can always do so, as is presently the case and effected with advanced placements when some of them do transfer. This writer knows of a lady back in the US who was trained as a nurse but is now a medical doctor. Similarly, in Ghana, we have several workers who have upgraded their skills through the university education into the officer corps in the army, police, banking, and other professions. The moral of this story is that the role of nursing in the chain of effective health delivery system is equally important as the role of medical doctors. But if, at some point, an individual decides to pursue medicine for any reason, the gateway is always open. Can you imagine if all healthcare workers are medical doctors or nurses? Similarly, you can be trained in building construction at a polytechnic institute, and you can further it up at the university to do civil engineering. Universities are primarily theoretical, research, and innovation institutions; whereas, polytechnics are essentially practical institutions which are all very important and integral for national economic development.
But to convert all tertiary institutions such as polytechnics into traditional universities just won?t solve any problem, particularly unemployment. Already, there exist a Graduate Unemployment Association in Ghana, and to add 10 ?new? universities, simply by changing the names of polytechnics, are going to congest the labor market and worsen the unemployment situation. A person trained at a polytechnic in building construction is much better than a JHS level educated or dropout mason, at least in the area of reading and understanding blueprint. Similarly, a person trained at a polytechnic as a mechanics with some physics background understands better the workings of the internal combustion engine (i.e., fuel combining with clean air and getting ignited by the spark plugs, with the resultant expansion of the burning gas forcing pistons down around a crankshaft and providing torque that ultimately gets transmitted to the car wheels through the axle) than a JHS educated or dropout who has learned the trade. It is such understanding and practical experience that every economy needs to stay innovative and competitive, and not just being able to repair the engine without really understanding the concepts behind its construction and workings, as we find most mechanics in our system. Such a practically trained person at a polytechnic can much easily transfer some skills into entrepreneurship and create jobs, than someone coming out with a bachelor?s degree.
In 1992, the UK government, for example, believed that the difference between polytechnics and universities had become confusing. So, under the Further and Higher Education Act, 1992, polytechnics were made fully-fledged universities that awarded their own degrees. Today, some 22 years later, the same UK government has realized that the decision was a mistake and that the new polytechnic universities should stop trying to ape research-based and more theoretically-based academic tertiary institutions or so-called universities.
We don?t have to make the same mistake over and over with our educational system like we did with the GCE Ordinary and Advanced Level systems of education, of which I was a beneficiary. There was nothing wrong with those systems to begin with, except that the educational authorities may have been blinded by revolutionary and post-revolutionary zeal for change, just for the sake of change. In fact, the A-Level stage served as a cusp zone, a filtration system or gateway that assured both student quality just prior to entering the university, as well as the latent function of slowing down the entry of young adults into the labor market to ease the pressure on unemployment. It assured student quality because the two-year A-Level preparation was, in fact, equivalent to first year university level work, and several American universities were granting one year advanced placement for holders of the A-Level certificates. Even today, several elite universities in the UK, where the GCE system originated, are granting admissions to those with the O-Levels. Yet, for political expediency, Ghana went ahead and supplanted the GCE system with the JHS/SHS systems. As a result of this blunder, today too many of our students who graduate from SHS have been poorly educated, our students know little, and their command of essential skills is too weak (Sakyi, 2011.)
This proposed educational reform to polytechnic institutions in Ghana is not different from the very blunder we committed with the GCE system. And coming on the heels of UK?s backtracking experience in educational reform in its polytechnic institutions, it can only point to one thing?political motives: The NDC government, in its zeal to be able to point to one action of constructive change to fulfill its defaulted campaign promises to the electorates, wants to point to its ?creation? of 10 public universities, carved out of existing polytechnics, to serve as 2016 presidential and parliamentary political campaign mantra. In this regard, I earnestly call on all true-meaning Ghanaians to rise up against this destruction of our educational system again. The NDC government only hopes to use this move to court cheap electoral votes from polytechnic students — that the NDC government ?elevated? them to ?university? status.
But is it in Ghana?s interests, in light of UK?s disappointment in this direction, and isn?t it likely to even exacerbate the unemployment problem? When are we going to learn to honestly separate Ghana?s educational true interests from selfish political expediency? It is like converting the School of Forestry in Sunyani to the University of Energy and Natural Resources because the old School of Forestry offered a good site to keep a political campaign promise of establishing a public university in the Brong Ahafo region by the Mills Administration. It seems we are just happy changing names of institutions for change and political propaganda sake, with least regard being given to the repercussions of such actions.
That?s all because we want to stay in power and make as much money as possible and finally leave the scene alive or dead with the material acquisitions? What about the dignity of the black human being on earth, from the mother African continent to the Americas, to the Netherlands, to the Suriname, to Haiti, and to the diasporas? We seem to behave as though, by our own handiwork and overly selfish nature, we are trampling on our own dignity and destroying our legitimate right and place among the comity of inhabitants of earth. What about our respect, when most countries we started the political independence and economic development experiment with have far outpaced us and left the black person a humiliated specie and laughing stock who, like the proverbial cartoon about the ape, ?has brains but doesn?t know how to use them?? Come on Ghana, we can do better.
Source: By Dr. Charles Addo,
Lecturer, Catholic University College of Ghana
