Fees Paid Should Match Education Offered

The newly inducted President of the Garden City University College (GCUC), a private institution in Kumasi, Prof Steve Sobotie, has emphasised that the high fees paid by university students should be commensurate with the quality of education offered by the institutions.

He noted that although the cost of accessing tertiary education was increasing every year, many of the products appeared not to meet the standards set by industry and commerce.

In a speech at his investiture, Professor Sobotie stressed the need for universities to turn out graduates who would demand little retraining to fit into modern trends of industry and commerce.

He said the nation did not need quantity but quality from its tertiary institutions. “The GCUC can only stand tall among others if quality is the distinctive measure,” he told the gathering.

A professor of Industrial Psychology, Prof Sobotie was appointed President of the GCUC after retiring as Principal of the Kumasi Campus of the University of Education, Winneba.

The GCUC, which is affiliated to the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and was established in 2005, now runs undergraduate programmes in Accounting with Computing, Economics and Statistics, Finance and Entrepreneurship Development and Nursing. From an initial student population of 17, it now has about 2,000 students.

Prof Sobotie pointed out that assessing the quality of a tertiary institution was not done by self-declaration but by other renowned international institutions which recognised the institution as such.

He said the growing number of private universities and colleges could benefit the nation immensely if capacity, equipment and facilities were developed.

Even though he acknowledged the enormity of the challenges ahead of him, he promised to work with his team to reposition the GCUC to enable it to meet the challenges of the time.

“Projects of final-year students, for instance, will be based on innovative ideas generated by them and based on the communities that surround the institution. Outcomes of these works should go back to the communities for use,” he said.

The Chancellor and Founder of the GCUC, Mr Albert Acquah, said although the institution was young, it had shown promise and expressed the hope that Prof Sobotie would catapult it into the future with hope.

He challenged students of the university to take interest in their studies to enable them to achieve the objective for which they enrolled on their programmes of study.

Present was the Vice-chancellor of KNUST, Prof W.O. Ellis.