Study highlights need for more faculty capacity investment

Researchers of a study in Ghana have called for increased investment in faculty capacity, suggesting that such investment will boost jobs for PhD graduates, support increasing student numbers and contribute to national development.

According to the study conducted by Education Sub-Saharan Africa (ESSA) in collaboration with the Association of African Universities, Ghana needs to increase its number of academic faculty five-fold so as to meet its higher education goals geared towards economic growth, as well as improve the student-teacher ratio and achieve a greater gender balance within the sector.

Funded by the Mastercard Foundation and launched this week, the “Demographics of Faculty” programme aims to conduct similar studies in five other African countries.

Currently, Ghana has 213 institutions of higher education, including public and private universities and colleges. These institutions have a student enrolment of 353,045 and are supported by a faculty of 11,906.

The study, which collected and analysed data from all 213 institutions, found that in order to meet the Ghanaian government’s goal of ensuring that all teaching staff have a PhD by 2025, the country will need an additional 3,410 academic staff.

It found that current levels of PhD graduates – 149 in public universities in 2016-17 – “fall far short of being able to satisfy such demand”.

Researchers used existing administrative data collected by the National Council for Tertiary Education from the 2014-15 to 2016-17 academic years and policy norms to analyse how an increasing student population, ageing faculty and changing higher education policy affect demand for research and teaching faculty.

Additionally, the researchers wanted to contribute to laying the groundwork for evidence-based policy planning in Ghana’s higher education sector and to establish a methodology for extending the research to other African countries.

Meetings of higher education leaders from across the country were held at the beginning and end of the research to discuss some of the challenges to meeting policy goals.

Among the study’s findings was the fact that the share of student enrolment in private universities did not match the proportionate increase in enrolment in the country’s nine traditional public universities that account for over 47% of total enrolment. Furthermore, gender inequality persists among academic subjects, with only 10 out of 120 professors at public universities being women.

Dr Olaf Hahn, the chief executive officer of ESSA, told University World News that action is now needed “for a robust supply chain for faculty” in Ghana. He said the data will help develop resource planning models to help government and organisations in matching supply and demand.

Greater investment in faculty capacity will “likely create a large number of high-quality jobs for PhD graduates and support growing student enrolment in tertiary education and contribute to broader economic and societal development for Ghana”, according to the report.

The researchers also said the government can use the data to make decisions on how much it wants to invest in science and technology research and in producing the right level of blended learning models which produce graduates who meet industry demands. As a consequence, the norms on student-teacher ratios may change and vary depending upon the type of learning being conducted.