University authorities upgrade administrative skills, Wednesday, March 28, 2013

A training programme to improve  the  leadership and administrative  skills of university authorities  in the country has opened in Accra.

The programme,  facilitated by the  National Council for Tertiary Education and under the auspices of Carnegie Corporation in New York, is to equip university leaders and managers with the necessary skills to better perform their duties.

Named Senior Academic Leadership Training (SALT), West Africa, the four-day event attracted 34 participants comprising vice chancellors, pro vice chancellors, deans, directors, registrars, and finance officers  from Ghana and Nigeria.

Speaking to the Daily Graphic after a presentation,  Dr Paul Effah, a former Executive Director of the NCTE,  who is the Project , said the programme sought to enhance the quality of education delivery in the country.

He said before the start of the programme, questionnaires on training needs with respect to practices in university administration and management for senior academic leaders were administered in all public and five private universities in the country.

The institutions identified the skill gaps, including governance, academic leadership, research and leadership, financial administration and quality assurance, which served as thematic areas for the programme.

He acknowledged the significant roles being played by private universities in the country and rallied support for their growth.

While acknowledging the importance of private universities in the country’s educational system, he  said accountability was very important.

“If you are a technology university and you are graduating more students in humanities, the public has the right to know why.”

He said,  “After  the programme, we  would follow up to the beneficiary institutions to find out how they are perming and how useful the workshop has been to them.”

“We would bring them together to exchange ideas, to get new ideas and skills, to sharpen their focus and to get them to raise issues of concern in their respective universities. We would have opportunity to brainstorm here and find solutions to some of the challenges.”

 That is not all. He said “it is also an opportunity to develop local materials for training; very often, this materials are foreign. This is why we are putting together these materials written by our own colleagues to be used in training to serve as materials which they can use to consult for their day-to-day work,” he added.

He said the public governance structure of public universities, which was being used for private universities, was not working because the private universities were different.

In that regard, he said during the training, participants would discuss and come up with a structure that would fit the private universities and then public discussions would be held on how best they could be governed and the appropriate structures for them.

“In the public universities, the chancellor is only a ceremonial head but if a church for instance sets up a university, you cannot tell the bishop to go and rest and should not come to the university. They would have an important role to play. This is to give them the recognition and assign them their specific roles.”

That, he said, would help streamline the system and debate and find out what structure was ideal.

Earlier in his presentation, Dr Paul Effah mentioned the different governance structure of universities across the world.

The programme which started in 2010 is expected to end September next year with the training of some 270 academic leaders.