The Minister for Education, Matthew Opoku Prempeh has hinted that the government will soon engage universities for the possible reduction in the time spent on pursuing an undergraduate degree program.
He said the government is looking at reducing the duration from the current four years to three years.
According to him, in most countries all over the world, it takes three years to complete an undergraduate degree program.
“Everywhere in the world, undergrad is three years not four years, why should we spend four years doing undergrad? We will sit down with the university lecturers and start challenging them, because Ghana is not an island,” the minister said.
Speaking at the 2019 Danquah Institute Leadership lecture under the theme: “World Class Education and Imperative for the Next Generation of Leaders,” Matthew Opoku Prempeh said he gathered that the University of Ghana originally ran three-year-long degree programs with the first year dedicated to general studies whose exams are non-scoring while the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology also take three years.
“Because we have learnt [from] our history, they took two years in doing a degree in the University of Ghana. KNUST took three years because in the University of Ghana, they had a first university exam that was non-scoring and still came out with PhDs,” the minister explained.
Currently, all public universities and most private universities run a 4-year first degree system for most programs, a development some say is not in conformity with global standards.
Matthew Opoku Prempeh said the government is currently working to review the existing curricula for the various levels of education in the country to ensure that graduates can compete favourably in the 21st-century world of work.
He said government is committed at enhancing technical and vocational education as it has outlined in its campaign manifesto.
Source: Citi News
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all over the world they do write gce "O" and "A" levels, do we write the same exams? All over the world after high school, graduates are professionals, can we say the same with our high school? There was a reason why a year was added to our University education. Don't just look at it from a narrow point of view please Mr. minister, yeah just as you said some went on to become Phd holders same with the 4-year too so what's the point? Always especially in education decisions are taken based on the majority of learners not on the exceptional few. Make University education one year there are students that can cope and make it 10 years there are students that can't cope; decisions are based on the middleline. Big decison like this should involve professionls, experts, stakeholders and the needs of the country vis-s-vis the future not just the minister and his ministry because I quite remember the agric science wahala in the 90s and 2000s when Universities refused to admit innocent and qualified agric science students (I was one of them) to do agric science all because of improper curriculum design without proper consideration. Concentrate on the pertinent issues and don't saddle yourself unnecessarily, ie free SHS, TVET, quality of education,relevant content etc. you don't have forever to solve all problems of education within your tenure like magic, well no country has really.
What at all, do you want to do with our education system! Even America, with all the good infrastructure and good professors has her university or college education to be 4 years! Are we really serious as a nation? You are doing reducing it to 3 years just because free SHS will be pushing up the numbers in our universities. Is that how to solve a problem? You might as well reduce it to 2 years then