Many universities running ‘wasteful’ education courses – MoE
Minister for Education and Member of Parliament for Bosomtwe Constituency, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum says many universities in the country are running education courses that do not produce employable graduates for recruitment.
Speaking at an African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) conference, the Education Minister said a few of the wasteful university education courses are Diploma in Education, Sanitation Education and Development Education.
“I know we have serious challenges in terms of courses that are offered in our universities and we are doing something about it. Thousand and thousands of students are being trained for jobs that do not exist,” Adutwum said at the event.
He said the Ministry of Education in due course will engage the management of various public universities in the country on the best possible way to focus on courses that can guarantee graduated tertiary students’ employment.
“We are engaging the universities, I think we need to focus on courses that have relevance to that particular student and to the nation. The public universities should not prepare students for non-teaching jobs,” the Minister stressed.
In a related development, the Minister for Education, Dr Adutwum has said his outfit at the appropriate time will meet Colleges of Education affiliated universities to discuss a worrying situation contributing to unemployment in the country.
In an interview monitored by AcademicWeek, Osei Yaw Adutwum said the number of graduate teachers from various public universities including the University of Education is making it difficult for them to be recruited into service.
“Only Colleges of Education graduates are mandated to be recruited by the Ghana Education Service but now the problem is universities are producing more graduate teachers making teacher recruitment difficult,” he noted.
He however said the central government is doing all it can to ensure the majority of the graduate teachers from Colleges of Education and other universities are recruited into service to help the free Senior High School policy.
“The government in terms of teachers recruitment is doing well, In the first year of double track over 10,000 university teachers were recruited but the problem now is there are so many graduate teachers in the system,” Adutwum said.
The upcoming engagement with the management of affiliated universities Colleges of Education, the Minister for Education said will enable Ghana to export eligible and qualified teachers to countries in need of teachers to fill their classrooms.
“The last time I met with the United Kingdom (UK) Minister for Education, he requested for us to provide them with unemployed Science teachers and it is something we are working on as a Ministry of Education,” Hon Yaw Osei said.
