General News of Thursday, 15 March 2018

Source: Kwabena Danso-Dapaah

Private Universities doing better than public ones - Prof. Omane-Antwi

Prof. Kwame Bosiako Omane-Antwi Prof. Kwame Bosiako Omane-Antwi

Vice Rector and Dean of Students of Pentecost University, a private tertiary institution, Prof. Kwame Bosiako Omane-Antwi has underrated the contribution of the public Universities in Ghana in terms of developing the country.

According to him, private universities have a better chance of reflecting and responding better on public value of higher education institutions, despite constraint of the law which binds them to affiliate their programmes with public chartered universities.

"They can develop innovative and demand-driving programmes to ginger entrepreneurial spirit in the university students", he stated.

"Private universities become clones of public chartered universities running the same old programmes with little or no supervision and yet paying very high affiliation fees to ill-equipped and resource-scarce mentor public universities"

"Private Universities can strategically respond better to the movement towards a Triple Helix model of partnership between government, industry, and higher education thus, private universities can develop tailor-made programmes to suit industry or government policy direction without much bureaucracy", he pointed out.
 
"It is important therefore for government to take a new and holistic look at the current ill-crafted affiliation process", Prof. Kwame Bosiako Omane-Antwi appealed 

The astute Professor added, "Government must also support private universities through the provision of GetFund support in the acquisition of teaching and laboratory equipment to support science, technical, engineering and mathematics (STEM) policy directive of government".

"I want to emphasise that the role of the entrepreneurial university is increasingly being seen as important for finding new ways to compete and succeed in uncertain and unpredictable environments".

The Guest Speaker spoke at the sixth congregation of the Perez University College held at the Perez Dome of the Perez Chapel International on Saturday, 10 March on the theme, "The Entrepreneurial University: A Model University for the 21st Century".