THE VICE-Chancellor of the Presbyterian University, Ghana (PUG), Professor Ebenezer Oduro Owusu, has called for an intense graduate education in the country to help sustain growth and development in the new world order of knowledge economy.
While emphasising that Ghana needs qualified graduates, he noted that without well-thought-through high-level postgraduate training, strategic breakthroughs in terms of cutting-edge research will be a mirage.
“The role of graduate studies is therefore crucial in ensuring that the needed workforce is appropriately educated with high moral standards, knowledgeable, technologically sound and with good entrepreneurial skills and spirit to contribute effectively to the development of Ghana,” the Vice-Chancellor said.
Prof. Oduro Owusu who was speaking at the fourth graduation ceremony of the school of graduate studies at Akropong in the Eastern Region recently urged stakeholders to support developmental research that focuses on offering timely and relevant solutions to the many problems facing the country.
A total of 313 postgraduate students; 185 males and 128 females who successfully completed their programmes of study in Educational Studies, International Development Studies, Environmental Health and Sanitation, Natural Resources Management, Financial Risk Management and Public Health graduated.
According to Prof. Oduro Owusu, there is the need for the provision of real-time, goal-oriented tactics that will result in technological advancements for quick socioeconomic growth and development.
“It is in this light that we have introduced the “Project in Mind; Product in Hand Concept”, dubbed the “P N P Concept” which seeks to ensure that our students enroll with a project in mind and graduate with a product in hand” he disclosed.
This method, he said, will enable students to develop their creativity, compete in the national and worldwide job markets, and change from being job seekers to job creators in order to sustain capacity-building initiatives and assure independence in knowledge application and product development.
It will also allow the nation access to mature and competent brains who will become the next generation of leaders.
The PUG Vice-Chancellor also stressed on the need to work seriously on human mind-sets and produce more result-oriented skill sets needed to ensure and sustain the nation’s developmental agenda.
He identified discipline, excellence, integrity, hard work, and faith in God as the values that will ensure that people depart from defective attitudes.
Meanwhile, PUG has received an indication from the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) to grant it accreditation to run a PhD in Development and Management and an MBA in Human Resource Management and Development after inspecting its facilities by next month.
Other programmes under various stages of development and accreditation include PhD in Leadership and Management, a Master of Science in Nursing, a Bachelor of Science in Communication Studies, an MBA in Project Development, a Master of Education in Guidance and Counselling and a Master of Science in Information Communication Technology.
The PUG obtained its presidential charter in 2022, which according to Prof. Oduro Owusu, imposes on the institution the responsibility to ensure that the quality of teaching and learning, as well as research, is world-class and par excellence.
He appealed to the university’s development partners, the business community, philanthropists and government to partner with it in its developmental efforts.
FROM James Quansah, Kumasi