It Is Great to Have STEM Universities in Every Region but We Must First Consider Available Resources

Mr. Kofi Asare, the Executive Director of the Africa Educational Watch (EduWatch) has welcomed the idea of STEM Universities in every Region.

However, he advised that, Ghana must first consider available resources to avoid establishing incomplete-tertiary institutions.

In a post shared on his official Facebook page on Sunday, 5th June, 2022, he wrote;

"It is great to have STEM universities in every region. However, we must first consider available resources and prioritize, else, we will keep establishing incomplete-mushroom tertiary institutions all over.

We have a huge outstanding task of upgrading 45 Colleges of Education into proper tertiary institutions. It’s been 10 years but very slow. Some do not have common science laboratories."

Kofi Asare added that Ghana is still struggling to complete the upgrading of the 10 Polytechnics into proper Technical Universities with facilities, infrastructure and faculties relevant to providing world class training in TVET at the BTech, MTech and DTech level.

Mr. Kofi Asare continued that, the last time (2021) we published a review of the Technical Universities, five years after their re-naming, they were still Polytechnics in essence, producing 60% humanities graduates. Even facilities to train in BTech Agriculture was a challenge for many.

"GETFund is also reporting 1,040 or so stalled projects between 2017 and 2021 alone.

So can’t we consider fusing these STEM programmes into existing TUs and expand to leverage on existing foundations?" He quizzed.

He answered himself that he thinks it is not impossible to do so.

Background Information

According to Citinewsroom, the Government is set to establish five Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics STEM-based universities in the five newly created regions in the country. This was disclosed by The Deputy Minister of Education, Rev. Ntim Fordjour, at the investiture of the Vice Chancellor of the University of Environment and Sustainable Development.