Emeritus Professor Kwasi Kwafo Adarkwa, former Vice Chancellor of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), has emphasised the urgent need for universities to hire more faculty members to accommodate the influx of high school graduates from the Free Senior High School (SHS) programme.
Speaking on the impact of the free SHS policy on tertiary institutions during an interview on the Point of View on Channel One TV on Monday, Prof Adarkwa highlighted the challenges universities face and the necessary steps to address them.
“The first thing will be to hire a few more faculty members. I think in most of the colleges what they do is that they have broken, computer science for example a year ago or something they had about 600 students so what they do is that they have broken into two.”
“…So what it is that today the lecturer will teach the first group, the first batch, tomorrow it teaches the next batch. If you don’t do this you see the kids standing out of the windows taking notes and if a pressman picks this we are dead,” Prof. Adarkwa stated.
He further stressed the importance of supporting the free SHS policy while also providing the necessary funding for tertiary institutions to adapt to the increased number of students.
“So we will support or we need to support the free SHS policy but let’s also provide some funding for the institutions to get them begin to react to what is happening,” he added.
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