Search results

Tertiary education in Ghana has seen rapid advancement over the past two decades. This growth is the result of transformative policy reforms such as upgrading polytechnics into higher education status; the establishment of the University of Development Studies (UDS) in the northern part of the country; the amalgamation of existing Colleges of Education into degree awarding institutions; the creation of the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) to provide supplementary financial support for infrastructure, faculty research and development; expansion of distance education programs; modification of the student loan scheme; and a conducive regulatory environment that encourages private sector participation in higher education provision. In spite of these developments, the system continues to face several challenges such as limited funding to support academic programs; limited participation rates for low-income students, females, and minorities; difficulty recruiting and retaining young academic and research faculty; inadequate research capacities; limited ICT infrastructure to enhance instruction and curriculum delivery and inadequate facilities to support science and technology education; etc. This chapter focuses on the state of public higher education in Ghana with emphasis on current growth and challenges. The chapter offers descriptive analysis based on government policy reports and documents, enrollment data from universities in Ghana, and data from the Ministry of Education and the National Council for Tertiary Education in Ghana.

The paper gives brief background information on the evolution of university education in Ghana since 1948. It then attempts to explain the concept of status and the parameters of academic librarianship. The main objective of this paper was to find out the current status of librarians in Ghanian universities. To achieve this, data were gathered from the three older university libraries in the country through a questionnaire. It was found out that there was no consensus on the status of universities in Ghana. It then gives several suggestions to improve on the academic status of librarians in Ghana.

In the era of the knowledge economy, universities are expected to contribute to the economic development of their countries. Therefore, their research agendas must be relevant to the local context and geared, though not uncritically, to the national educational agenda. To do this diligently requires research autonomy. However, due to the low government investment in research on the African continent, universities have had to rely on other sources of funding, which usually come with strings attached. Our study investigates the case of Ghana, in particular, the University of Ghana, the leading research university in the country. We drew on resource dependence theory, which suggests that, despite external pressures on universities, they can enhance their autonomy through the implementation of strategic measures. Primarily, we analyzed documents such as research reports, journal articles and speeches in the light of Clark’s (1998) model of the “entrepreneurial university,” which, if adapted with care and in a localized form in Ghana, may contribute to the research autonomy of its universities. We found that, although research autonomy in Ghanaian universities is limited due to their over-reliance on external donor funding, it is likely to be strengthened if the government of Ghana follows through on plans to increase research funding and universities continue with measures to diversify their funding sources.

This paper explores stakeholder perceptions on the nature and extent of sustainability reporting on the websites of technical universities (TUs) in Ghana.

The authors collected data from the websites of the 10 TUs in Ghana and interviewed the stakeholders of the TUs. In analyzing the data, the authors used thematic analysis for the interview responses. The authors also adopted the global reporting initiative (GRI) guidelines and campus sustainability assessment tools for the presentation and analysis of the sustainability disclosures on the websites of the TUs.

The authors found that due to weak institutional coercions, there were limited disclosures on the websites of the TUs, which aimed at gaining stakeholders' legitimacy; the disclosures were more focused on organizational profile, governance and educational aspects of sustainability. To a large extent, while some external stakeholders such as parents, regulators and alumni appear to be less interested in the disclosures on the TU's websites, internal stakeholders such as employees (teaching and non-teaching staff) and students who frequently visited the TU's websites perceived limited reporting and were not impressed with the extent of sustainability disclosures on these websites.

The findings of this study are intended to assist policy-makers in the educational sector to appreciate the importance of sustainability reporting on their websites. The results of this study will assist higher educational institutions (HEIs) in increasing the success rate of sustainability implementation by overcoming the lack of sustainability disclosures on their websites. Thus, the results of this study have implications for sustainability implementations, particularly those in emerging economies and policy-makers of universities worldwide.

This study could provide two significant values. First, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no other study has explored stakeholder perceptions of sustainability reporting in implementing sustainability within the education sector. Second, the results were arrived at by combining stakeholder consultations with content analyses, which could be a good guideline for sustainability implementation in the educational sector of developing countries.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the sustainability dimensions reported on the websites of public and private universities in Ghana, an emerging economy.

The universities in Ghana were categorized under public and private universities. The top five under each category were chosen (by Edu Rank’s ratings), and data was gathered from the websites of the sampled universities. Data analysis was conducted using Global Reporting Initiative (GRI-G4) framework and sustainability tools for campus assessment. Findings were then analyzed through stakeholder theory’s lens and organizational characteristics such as ownership, students’ acceptance ratios, performance, size and age.

This study’s results show that the key aspects of sustainability disclosed on the websites of the sampled private and public universities in Ghana are more of economic and campus sustainability assessment indicators than the social and environmental dimensions. Contrary to the popular notion that private sector organizations do more sustainability reporting than those in the public sector, in the case of Ghana, the sampled public universities reported more than the privately owned universities. This study attributes the extent and variations of sustainability reporting among the public and private Ghanaian universities to the universities’ characteristics such as students’ acceptance ratios, performance, size, ownership and age.

The findings from this study indicate that in improving the value of sustainability reporting, stakeholders of the educational sector in emerging economies should encourage universities to adopt the GRI-G4 framework and campus sustainability assessment indicators in disclosing their sustainability initiatives.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first study to compare the extent and variations in sustainability reporting between public and private universities in an emerging economy.

There has been a significant change in the provision of library services due to the application of technology to every aspect of library services. This has posed a major challenge to library staff as they need to be abreast with current technologies and their application to library services. One means by which a librarian can overcome this challenge is through professional development (PD) programs. The purpose of this paper is to determine PD opportunities in private university libraries in Ghana.

A cross-sectional survey of 61 staff and interviews with 20 heads of libraries was conducted to collect data from 25 private universities in Ghana.

The study revealed that not all library staff in the private universities were allowed to attend PD programs. None of the private universities studied had a policy on PD and only three institutions made budgetary allocation to PD programs. Majority of the private universities did not have in-house PD programs and there were no means of knowledge sharing in most of the libraries studied.

In this paper, the researchers identified the major challenges encountered by library staff in private universities in Ghana and propose that librarians should see PD as a part of their own responsibility while, libraries should have a PD policy and make budgetary allocation toward PD.

This study examines the factors that explain Ghanaian business students’ intentions to pursue a Certified Professional Accounting (CPA) qualification.

The study uses survey method of research and mainly used questionnaires as data collection instrument to elicit information from the respondent group. Using a total of 641 business students from the University of Ghana Business School, a mixture of factor analysis and logistic regression analysis techniques was used in investigating the study objectives.

Results from the regression analysis demonstrate that students’ preference and beliefs about accounting professional qualification, academic major and grade point average are significantly associated with their intentions to pursue a CPA qualification. Moreover, majority of the sampled respondents (47.9 per cent) with the desire to pursue a CPA qualification prefer to be affiliated with the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, 27.2 per cent prefer the Institute of Charted Accountant Ghana qualification, while only 7 per cent of the students prefer to be affiliated with the Chartered Institute of Management Accountant.

The findings from this study have important implications for the various professional accountancy bodies, accounting educators and other stakeholders interested in promoting the choice of accounting as a career path among university students.

The results indicate that, as part of the broader strategy to increase the number of professional accountants in Ghana, there is the need to promote the study of accounting at the undergraduate level in the various universities in the country.

This study uniquely uses the behavioral decision theory to explain the dominant factors associated with students’ intentions to pursue a CPA qualification.

Ghanaian public universities have fully embraced the concept of open access. This is evident in the increasing numbers of institutional repositories (IRs) by universities in Ghana. However, to ensure the sustainability of these IRs, it is vital the current IR infrastructure is capable of responding to current and future demands. The purpose of this study is to investigate the sustainability of the current IR infrastructure of public universities in Ghana.

The convergent parallel mixed methods design was adopted. A total of 830 respondents comprising IR managers, library staff (digitisation and e-resources units), postgraduate students, lecturers and university librarians from five public universities in Ghana were sampled for this study. A questionnaire and a semi-structured interview guide were the main instruments used for data collection.

The findings of this study revealed that the IR infrastructure of public universities in Ghana is robust and has the capacity to expand when the need arises. However, funding, cost of internet connectivity, personnel and erratic power supply were identified as major challenges confronting IRs in Ghana.

This study highlighted Ghana's existing IR infrastructure situation. This study is a significant contribution to the literature from West Africa because there is not much research on IR infrastructure from this part of the world.

This study aims to investigate the impact of energy access on foreign direct investment (FDI) in an emerging market.

The study uses the two-stage least square instrumental variables estimation approach to compute the parameters of the model to account for any potential endogeneity and time persistence in energy access.

The results show that energy access significantly influences FDI inflows in Ghana. The results of the study also revealed that natural resources and macroeconomic variables such as real interest rate, gross domestic product growth rate are significant determinants of FDI inflows in Ghana.

The practical implication of this study is that there is a need for energy sector policy reforms in Ghana that would guarantee a secured and continued supply of energy to enhance energy access to boost FDI. Ghana should aim for a cost-effective, stable and environmentally friendly source of energy as an alternative to hydro energy as the main source of its power generation to promote FDI. Also, Ghana should initiate and implement policies aimed at creating an enabling and stable macroeconomic environment, as macroeconomic factors in this study are found to be drivers of FDI.

This study provides firsthand information on energy access and FDI from the Ghanaian perspective.

Institutional governance has recently attracted significant attention, fuelled by increasing numbers of global high‐profile corporate failures and scandals. In many countries issues have been raised about university governance. In Ghana, university governance has become crucial following the upsurge of private universities in recent years arising out of: increased demand for tertiary education resulting from high population growth; and expanded enrolment at basic and secondary levels, which have far exceeded the capacity of existing institutions. This study aims to explore and assess the governance arrangements of private and public universities in Ghana.

A multi‐stage sampling technique was used to select three private and two public universities. An exploratory and comparative approach was used to examine the governance arrangements of private and public universities in Ghana.

Both private and public universities in Ghana follow the “traditional”, “business”, and “trusteeship” models of university governance, although in different proportions. Additionally, both types of institutions follow the bicameral system of decision making.

Only five of 19 universities in Ghana were sampled. Future research might expand the sample size to test and validate the initial perspectives from this study and also investigate differences between governance arrangements of faith based and non‐faith based private universities.

The paper reports the findings of the first nation‐wide investigation into governance arrangements of Ghanaian universities. It will interest policy makers, university authorities, and other stakeholders in the higher educational sector.