Save GETFUND - Prof Adow-Obeng declares

Front Page: January 5, 2008.
Story: Albert K. Salia
THE Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, Professor Emmanuel Adow-Obeng, has expressed concern over the financial demands on the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) and called for the preservation of its original mission.
He said the GETFund was currently under severe pressure from demands it was not intended to support originally.
“Besides, it is becoming the sole source of funding (apart from personnel emoluments) for the tertiary institutions rather than as supplementation,” he said.
Prof Adow-Obeng expressed this concern when he delivered the keynote address at the 59th Annual New Year School which opened at the University of Ghana, Legon, yesterday.
The school, which is being organised by the Institute of Adult Education (IAE) of the university, is on the theme: “Tertiary Education and National Development”.
Prof Adow-Obeng noted that the challenges of infrastructure, occasioned by high student numbers, resulted in the government setting up and sustaining the GETFund.
He, however, pointed out that “if information through the grapevine on the 2008 GETFund allocations to tertiary institutions is true, then they will be woefully inadequate to support anything meaningful in our institutions this year”.
He said dwindling financial resources had led to the introduction of creative and innovative ways in diversifying the sources of funding by the institutions, such as fees paid by foreign students, fees paid by full-fee paying Ghanaian students, commercialising of facilities and consultancies.
Prof Adow-Obeng noted that because of the crucial need to finance itself, the universities had drawn closer to industry in what had been termed the “knowledge business”.
According to him, the impetus for research was moving away from the traditional passive pursuit of knowledge in the Ivory Tower to research conducted in response to the immediate needs of industry.
“This shift has served to strengthen research activities within the university and clarified the relationship with industry,” he noted.
Prof Adow-Obeng, therefore, stressed the need to create a research fund to resource tertiary institutions, both public and private, and other research institutions.
He also called for the establishment of a technology centre to bring together researchers and industry to facilitate the processing of research results for commercialisation and the transfer of technology to business and industry.
Prof Adow-Obeng expressed concern over the duplication of programmes by both public and private tertiary institutions in the country.
“What is happening now is that a number of our universities are engaged in providing the same service. Good as this may be, it is still grossly inefficient, especially since we are duplicating structures, human resource, financial outlay and even programmes,” he said.
“We should aim at establishing national and regional centres of excellence as a way of reducing cost and pool resources and expertise for greater effectiveness and impact,” he said.
Prof Adow-Obeng said there was a life-sustaining symbiotic relationship between tertiary institutions and the nation.
He said what tertiary institutions required of the government was a deeper commitment to growth and development, stressing that “the institutions demand and deserve the full support of the government and industry”.