Making Tertiary Education Relevant

Background

Business success overwhelmingly depends on the quality of human capital employed within an organization to facilitate process alignment with strategic objectives and to ensure long-term enterprise sustainability. According to Ghana Living Standards Survey 5 as compiled by the Ghana Statistical Service, the employment statistics currently indicate that 55 percent of adults are own account workers, 20 percent are contributing family workers while 18 percent are employees. Only one-tenth (9.4%) of the currently employed attained secondary school education or higher. Over a third (35.2 %) had never been to school. Notwithstanding its diminutive contribution to the larger unemployment picture, the issue of graduate unemployment and quality is as much a qualitative as well as a quantitative one which requires appropriate policy response and integrated program interventions by all stakeholders to achieve positive outcomes. On average less than 0.01% of those who enroll in tertiary institutions drop out or fail to graduate. Therefore, in the absence of official data on the actual number of graduates employed, one could use enrolment figures for the graduating class (the final year class) as the measure of supply (Boateng and Ofori-Sarpong, 2002).

Given this definition, Boateng and Ofori-Sarpong (2002) further argues that the quantity gap is widened by a slower job creation rate or available jobs as measured by publicly advertised vacancies. It is perceived that employers in Ghana generally discriminate against holders of polytechnic qualifications because of uncertainty about quality and hence placement on the job hierarchy. This partly explains the lack of growth in the demand for polytechnic graduates relative to university graduates.

The quality gap refers to the difference between supply of skills and the demand for them. The existence of this gap may be attributed to the poor fit between what is taught in schools and actual skill and competency requirement of jobs available in the economy, and may therefore be linked to the issue of relevance.

In 1994 the UNDP reported the existence of skill shortages, which evidently still persist in Ghana today. The following public sector areas was reported to have skill shortages:

- General management and administration
- Financial management and accounting,
- Marketing, trade promotion, and development,
- Policy analysis and formulation, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and budgeting.

In the private sector, the following skills have been found to be in short supply:

- Production and materials management,
- Accounting, financial management and auditing,
- Marketing,
- Information Management and Statistics,
- Civil, electrical, mechanical engineering,
- Human resource management.

Managing For Change- Policy Proposals
Implementing a policy response to address the quality deficit as indicated would require a multi-level coordination across various institutions and stakeholders. A strategic alignment of policy framework with effective supervision, strong regulation and institutional support from companies (employers) and the tertiary institutions themselves is a key success factor for any policy intervention in this arena.

Policy Framework
Quality improvement in tertiary education within the policy space has several dimensions; infrastructure deficits, faculty motivation, administrative inefficiency, low ICT usage inter alia. Government intervention must focus on improving these quality variables. It is important also for government to clearly understand the policy linkages with other sectors in order to achieve an optimum balance in terms of economic outcome. Tax concessions for private enterprise on training and development investments would go a long way to improve the skill and competence levels of graduate employees. This would enable private enterprises off-set their cost in order to maintain projected returns.

Regulation and Supervision
According to Act 454, 1993 the National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE) is mandated to advise the Ministry of Education on matters relating to tertiary education in Ghana. Considering its role and mandate, an exercise of evaluating the effectiveness of NCTE regarding its capacity to discharge the advisory and supervisory responsibilities, is a strategic imperative. With seven standing committees to do its work, the NCTE seem uniquely positioned to influence the quality thrust in the delivery of tertiary education through effective implementation of agreed standards and monitoring compliance of same. The constitution of the academic committee is also crucial in ensuring that private sector views, in terms of evolving market trends and skills requirement, are factored into program design and approval. Strenuous effort must be made therefore to restructure the academic committee in order to reflect the private enterprise perspectives. The Council must also involve Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in performance monitoring through transparent reporting of returns submitted by tertiary institutions.

Institutional Management
The current approach of 'chew and pour' instruction model as it has come to be known, is where information is memorized and regurgitated for the sole purpose of passing term assessment tests, oblivious of the fitness for a larger purpose in terms of value creation and employability. The management challenge for tertiary institution administrators is to redesign competency assessment tests in a manner that encourages problem-solving, critical reasoning, in addition to scholarship in areas where the country skill-mix suffers deficit. Games and Simulation instructional models must substitute for the 'Sage on Stage' pedagogical approach that seem more teacher-oriented than student focused.

Corporate Contribution
Private enterprise response in Ghana and across Africa, to graduate quality (skill) levels as manifested through rampant complaints is fast becoming a tired narrative, as the issue of economic productivity per capita increasingly assumes central importance in public policy discourse and boardroom debates. The more proactive approach is to increase training and development expenditure through more internship engagements, corporate-sponsored career and skill counselling clinics etc. This could be facilitated by having more transparent engagement with public policy managers for tax concessions on threshold investments in training and development of graduate employees.

Policy Recommendations
1) Amendment of Act 454 needed to provide legal framework for better performance reporting by NCTE on issues of compliance with agreed standards.

2) Re-design of competency assessment tests by tertiary institutions to enable build critical-thinking and problem-solving.

3) Tax breaks on training and development investments to be considered as incentive for deepening the skill mix in the economy.

Nkunimdini Asante-Antwi
VP, Markets and Policy Research
233 (202) 952658
233 (242) 564143
[email protected]

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