Catholic University To Launch Ghc200m Endowment Fund Friday

The Vice Chancellor of Catholic University

Catholic University College of Ghana (CUCG) at Fiapre in the Brong-Ahafo Region under the auspices of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference will on Friday, May 18 launch a 200 million Endowment Fund and rebranding of the College as a strategy to revolutionise tertiary education in Africa at the Christ the King Parish Hall at 5:00pm.

The programme to be chaired by Sir Kt. Bro Albert Essien, former Group CEO of Ecobank, will on the theme: An Evening of Change; Catholic University College of Ghana and the New Educational Paradigm.

The Objectives of the Fund is to satisfy regulatory requirement for receiving Presidential Charter; improve infrastructure on site and Investments (including staff) to raise it to the level of a top tier continental university.

The launching and rebranding is part of the strategic plan of the Governing Council of CUCG which has the potential to make the university the new paradigm in tertiary education in the entire sub-continent.

This is a legacy project which would outlive all of us and establish CUCG in the ranks of the Ivy League schools in the United States of America. A project of such ambition and scope requires the collective effort of the entire Catholic community, clergy and laity alike.

The CUCG has chalked fifteen years of existence this year and since its inception, it has striven to bring that unique brand of Catholic excellence in education to the tertiary sector.

The establishment of an endowment fund is a regulatory requirement in order to receive a Presidential Charter. A Presidential Charter allows the university to award its own degrees and frees it from the need to be affiliated to a degree-awarding institution. Affiliation fees are high – approximately GHS1million per year, excluding incidental expenses e.g. inspection visits by staff of the awarding/mother institution

The needs of running a University are onerous and all institutions need external support to remain viable, hence the need for the Endowment Fund. The government-owned Universities have recourse to subventions from public funds allocated by the government. Private universities have no recourse to such a safety net and are obliged to seek external sources of funding.

The tuition fees are simply not enough to cover the expenses involved in maintaining a University. It is important to note that no modern University of repute (from Ox-bridge to the Ivy Leagues and beyond) run on tuition fees alone – they all have endowment funds worth several billion US dollars. Furthermore, in Ghana our ability to charge economic costs for tuition are constrained by the proliferation of tertiary institutions in the country (currently standing at 84) some of whom are not particularly rigorous about quality standards.

Other Requirements for the Charter are status of the faculty: the university needs to have a certain minimum number of professors, PhD holders, senior lecturers; ability to carry out research is critical. The institution should be in a position to contribute to increasing the body of knowledge in various academic fields not just be a primary disseminators of knowledge (i.e. teaching); allied to research is the quantity of peer reviewed publications it churns out in a year there should be the necessary infrastructure to support the pursuit of higher learning (e.g. library facilities should have a certain minimum titles, e-learning capabilities, lecture halls, furniture, etc.)

The general public especially Catholics are encouraged to attend this landmark legacy project of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference.