In the Legon Impasse, Both the Auditor-General and the Vice-Chancellor Have a Point

I have written about this subject before, that faculty at our universities and colleges ought to significantly up their game, as it were, by becoming more productive than they seem to be presently, in order to keep abreast of new developments in their respective disciplines with their counterparts at the leading universities on both the African continent and abroad. You see, the funding methodology by which every pesewa has to come from the Central Government to our tertiary academies is a relic of the colonial era and the early post-independence period when our leaders didn't know any better, and intake at out universities and colleges was literally few and far between. As our universities and colleges became less elitist and the acquisition of a college degree became a virtual necessity, both the Government and our university administrators, a remarkable percentage of whom were schooled abroad, ought to have promptly and accordingly devised a viable means of tapping into generous funding sources abroad as well as from our local corporate establishment, in the form of the establishment of scholarship-awarding foundations for both students and faculty.

One ready source of funding could have been the Alumni Associations of the various universities and colleges in the country and their branches/chapters abroad. As well, partnering with well-endowed academies overseas such as the privately owned and operated Ivy League academies, among them Yale, Columbia and Harvard universities, as well as flagship academies in technologically advanced countries like Japan, Singapore, Russia, China and a plethora of well-established European universities. The research of faculty, especially in the sciences, could also be aligned with the needs and requirements of industry and the corporate world at large. That was how privately owned and operated flagship academies like Stanford University and the California Institute of Technology (CALTECH) came to assume the cutting-edge global ranking status that they are today. Out of the creative imagination of our science and technology faculty, agreements could be struck with the industrial producers of invention patents that could rake in billions of cedis and dollars annually to these tertiary academies.

Which is also why I perfectly agree with those critics and politicians who have argued for the so-called Research Allowances routinely paid to our lecturers and professors, indiscriminately, to be promptly discontinued. In serious and functional democracies, research funding allowances and/or stipends are doled out on merit. Lecturers and professors have to draft and design research proposals with relevance for both teaching and industry. For instance, there are research-oriented foundations all over the world that are willing to fund research proposals that seek funding for the procurement of pedagogy-enhancing tools and equipment, so long as it can be objectively demonstrated by funding applicants over a period of time to foundations and grant-awarding institutions that such humongous investments, oftentimes running into tens of thousands and, sometimes, even millions of cedis and dollars, have been strictly and productively used for the purpose or purposes for which they were solicited. I know a crackerjack research scientist and scholar like the Vice-Chancellor of the country's oldest and foremost tertiary academy, the University of Ghana, Prof. Ebenezer Oduro Owusu, is more intimately familiar with what I am talking about than most of the rest of us.

And, by the way, Prof. Owusu also happens to be my classmate from our St. Peter's Secondary School (PERSCO) days at Okwawu-Nkwatia. We spoke briefly by phone recently – he was on a business trip to one of the flagship academies of the State University of New York (SUNY) – and my old classmate came off to me as one who was very particular about raising the general standard of scholarship, teaching and productivity at Legon. Prof. Owusu has also, perhaps, received more research grants in the history of the University of Ghana than any of his colleagues, both past and present. He also comes off to me as one who is studiously appreciative of the primary role of a Vice-Chancellor or Chief University Administrator as Chief Funding-Solicitation Officer of his institution. Now, it goes without saying that there is absolutely no period in the history of the academy whereby even the most well-endowed globally renowned academies like the Oxbridge League and the Ivy League establishments deemed themselves to be so richly endowed not to need any more funding support or assistance.

Read More: University Of Ghana Fights Auditor General

In the ongoing impasse between the Academic/Governing Council of the University of Ghana, on the one hand, and the Auditor-General, Mr. Daniel Yaw Domelevo, on the other, both sides have sound and practical logic to their claims or arguments (See “University of Ghana Fights Auditor-General” Daily Guide / Modernghana.com 9/14/18). What needs to be done here is to strike a mutually acceptable and beneficial compromise, while, as already adumbrated, the University's Administrators and the Ministry of Education devised more viable means of funding for the country's foremost tertiary academy. Vice-Chancellor Owusu is perfectly right in his argument that the greater the critical mass of experienced and talented post-retirement lecturers and professors are rehired on contractual basis the greater the junior faculty members and students stand to benefit. But it is also equally true, as Mr. Domelevo maintains, that the greater the critical mass of post-retirement or professorial emeriti are retained long past their tenure and prime, the more difficult it becomes for University Administrators to recruit or hire very talented faculty in their prime to take the scholarship and technological advancement of the University and its students to the next requisite level.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
September 14, 2018
E-mail: [email protected]