The Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) has greenlit more than 1000 academic programs for study across public universities in the country. The move is aimed at streamlining the academic calendar of tertiary institutions, ensuring a more focused and relevant approach to education.

Dr. Ahmed Abdulai Jinapor, the Director-General of GTEC, emphasized the need for institutions to align with their specified mandates and niche areas. He revealed plans to establish a new body tasked with monitoring and overseeing the implementation of these approved programs by public universities.

“We want institutions to stay in their niche, institutions should stay in their mandate areas. Institutions cannot be doing anything and everything. The system whereby you have technology institutions that are mandated to do technology-oriented programs, but today doing Akan, Twi, Dagbani, I think should be something of the past,” commented Dr. Jinapor.

The Director-General further highlighted that the proposed oversight body would ensure that universities operate within their defined areas of expertise. He stressed the importance of program relevance to the developmental aspirations of the country and cautioned against introducing programs that could contribute to saturated markets in the economy.

This move by GTEC is expected to bring about more focus and efficiency in the higher education sector, aligning academic offerings with national development goals and preventing the proliferation of programs in areas already well-served by existing institutions.