VICE CHANCELLORS NEED MANAGERIAL SKILLS

(P. 24/25) NOVEMBER 14, 2007

Story: Kofi Yeboah
THE Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, Rev Prof. Emmanuel Adow-Obeng, has stated that the appointment of Vice Chancellors with no knowledge in management has been a drawback on the effective management of the universities.
He, therefore, stressed the need for persons appointed Vice Chancellors to acquire management skills to enable them to address the challenges in their universities.
Rev Prof Adow-Obeng made the comment when he delivered a lecture at the Great Hall of the University of Ghana, Legon, to mark African Universities Day.
The Day was instituted on November 12, 1994, by the African Union (AU), formerly known as the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), in pursuant to a resolution passed by the OAU Council of Ministers in June 1994.
This year, the Day, which coincided with the 40th anniversary of the Association of African Universities (AAU), was celebrated on the theme, “Forty years of championing African university leadership: Prospects and challenges for the near future”.
Delivering his lecture on the theme, Rev Prof Adow-Obeng assessed the development of higher institutions of learning in Africa, their challenges and prospects for the future.
On the need for Vice Chancellors to acquire management skills, he said the AAU had been organising workshops and seminars to update the managerial skills of Vice Chancellors.
Rev Prof Adow-Obeng urged young graduates to take up faculty appointments at the universities, assuring them that better prospects awaited them.
According to him, conditions of service at public universities in Ghana, for instance, had improved considerably over the past two years, adding that there were many opportunities at the universities that young graduates could benefit from.
He said over the past two decades, higher education had provided the needed human resource for many African countries.
He, however, observed that the growing demand for higher education had presented enormous challenges for many African universities, adding that poor economic development of African countries had deepened those challenges.
Rev Prof. Adow-Obeng noted that the AAU was making efforts to help African universities overcome some of the challenges they faced, and further lauded the innovation being embraced by some of the universities, which had led to their improvement.
He said the era of globalisation and information communication technology (ICT) was changing the environment within which African universities operated and that unfortunately, they were yet to take full advantage of the change.
On funding, he indicated that African governments had reduced the requirements of the universities by about 50 per cent over the years, and that was making it difficult for them to attract and retain academic staff.
The Head of Communications at the AAU Secretariat, Dr Hoba Pascal, said although there had been some improvement in higher education in Africa, it still faced many challenges.
He attributed the situation to the bad economic disposition of African countries, saying, “At a time when the rest of the world has experienced rapid economic growth, most of the people of Africa have been left behind with nearly half of its people living on less than $1 a day”.
Dr Pascal said in spite of the challenges, African universities, after diagnosing their problems, were in the process of finding solutions to them.
The Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Prof Clifford Nii Boi Tagoe, who chaired the event, expressed concern about the ageing faculty members and added his voice to the call on young graduates to take appointments at the universities.