The Kumasi Polytechnic is to run a three-year PhD programme in Statistics with effect from the 2012/2013 academic year.



In this regard, the Polytechnic is collaborating with the Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone - Freetown, which has a strong Statistics faculty, to run the programme.



The Rector of the polytechnic, Professor Nicholas Nsowah-Nuamah who announced this said the University of Sierra Leone will award the PhD degree while the Kumasi Polytechnic, with the support of the Statistics faculty of the Sierra Leone University, will provide tuition.



If successful, Kumasi Polytechnic will become the first polytechnic in Ghana to achieve that feat.



Professor Nsowah-Nuamah who was addressing a one-day orientation programme for 75 newly recruited senior members and senior staff of the Polytechnic said the institution has the mandate to run the PhD programme.



The programme, which was the first of its kind, was organised by the office of the Registrar and is set to become a regular affair for all newly recruited staff.



Explaining further, the Rector said the Kumasi Polytechnic will also introduce Bachelor and Master of Technology programmes in Allied Health Sciences, notably, Nursing, Dispensing and Laboratory Technology as well as in Entrepreneurship, Business Management, Accounting with Computing and more PhD programmes in other subject areas.



For this reason, he said the Kumasi Polytechnic was collaborating with several Chinese universities to implement these programmes.



“But in the interim, we will start with the Statistics PhD next year. This is because Statistics is my area of expertise and we can run it very successfully. Moreover, research we have conducted indicate that the vast majority of Statistics lecturers in the Polytechnics and several other tertiary institutions in the country do not possess PhD degrees,” the Rector said.



Professor Nsowah-Nuamah noted that the Polytechnic intends to fill in this gap by running the Statistics PhD programme.



This, according to him, will ensure that a vast majority of Statistics lecturers acquire the requisite doctoral qualification to confidently impart knowledge and tuition to their students.



He said the PhD programme will be

run on “fee-paying” basis because it has to be self-sustaining and self-financing otherwise it will fall through.

“All applicants including Statistics staff of K-Poly will have to pay to receive the tuition leading to the PhD,” he said.



“That notwithstanding, if the need arises for us to sponsor our staff to participate in the programme, we will do so, just as we have been doing for our lecturers who went abroad for higher education,” the Rector said.

Professor Nsowah-Nuamah further stated that the Kumasi Polytechnic has started the four-year Bachelor of Technology programmes in Computerised Accounting, Civil Engineering and Building Technology and has the mandate to award its own degrees.



More programmes, he said, will be added to the BTech degree courses in subsequent years which will ensure that the Kumasi Polytechnic compete fiercely with the universities in attracting the best students.



Touching on the award of HND certificates, he said the Polytechnic currently faces several problems with delayed issuance by NABPTEX. Currently 2009 and 2010 batches have been unable to graduate and are still awaiting their certificates.

This is because the National Accreditation Board scuppered attempts by the Polytechnic to issue its own certificates.

“They contend that higher national diplomas cannot be issued by individual polytechnics, a situation which is in direct conflict with Section 5 of the Polytechnics Act, Act 745, 2007,” he said.

“Nevertheless, we are still talking to the accreditation board to resolve these issues and we are confident that we can reach an amicable resolution. We envisage issuing our own HND certificates in the long run,” the Rector added.

The Rector said, the time has come for the Kumasi Polytechnic to positively assert itself in the academia and to do this requires a lot of innovative programmes and courses, which are targeted at addressing critical middle and upper level manpower needs of the country.

“We must work hard to shirk the negative tag attached to the polytechnics and make them the desired destination for students and staff. This administration is ready to work towards achieving that,” he said.

The Vice Rector, Mr. Eric Brobbey told the newly recruited staff that management was in the process of negotiating for better conditions of service for staff and entreated all of them to put in their maximum best to ensure that K-Poly assumes its rightful place in academia.

Mr Brobbey implored the new staff to see themselves as team players and important stakeholders in the polytechnic.

He said the Polytechnic was growing and therefore everything one does and consequently the behaviour of the institution must be like that of the universities.

The Registrar, Mr. Robert Korankye-Mensah, on his part said, the orientation programme for new staff has become necessary because it is now a requirement by the National Accreditation Board for public institutions to initiate new recruits.

According to him the Kumasi Polytechnic has restructured its recruitment process and which has enabled the institution employ more staff at one go and hence the ability to organise the programme.

Mr. Korankye–Mensah said the current student population of the polytechnic stands at 9,982 with staff strength of 604.

The Kumasi Polytechnic, he said, currently runs 20 HND courses, three BTech programmes and 27 non-tertiary programmes. The institution also has 15 departments, five faculties and centres and one institute.