President of the Garden City University College (GCUC); Prof. Edward Kwame Asante has announced that GCUC has been given accreditation by the NAB of the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission to run a two-year research Master’s degree programme in Midwifery which he said is scheduled to start in February 2022.
Speaking at the institution’s 13th Congregation, he explained how the university has navigated the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. He explained that staff had to reconfigure all teaching, learning and assessment online in record speed while ensuring that students are not affected adversely. He was full of praise for the Centre for Open, Distance and e-learning (CODel) and the school’s IT team.
“The other challenge was to increase student enrollment and radically enhance revenue generation and promote the financial health of the University College” he recounted.
For her part, the Guest Speaker; Madam Kaleo-Bio who is an experienced Banker addressed the theme “Post COVID-19 and the Educational Enterprise: Innovative strategies to stay in business”.
She revealed that although the COVID-19 pandemic has affected many industries negatively, education has been the hardest hit.
“…the educational system or in this context, educational enterprise has been the hardest hit by the virus. As essential as education is in the lives of humanity, during the lockdown, schools all around the world were shut down; and the worst affected were private schools at all levels. Many young institutions could not pay salaries at the time leading to loss of quality staff and this affected those institutions when schools had to reopen” she lamented.
She revealed that tertiary institutions have been forced to make huge investments in IT infrastructure and training in order to survive the pandemic; a situation that according to her has moved these tertiary institutions into the realms of marketization.
“…by this I mean tertiary institutions have become fully functional corporate bodies that aim at providing quality services, ensuring growth on both the top line and the bottom line with an improved social image to attract the best students. This is especially true for private universities such as GCUC”, she explained.
She stressed that there is an urgent need to strategize in order to stay afloat, be resilient and sustainable irrespective of storms in the business environment.
The occasion of the graduation was also used as an opportunity to launch the GCUC Global Association; an alumni Association for the University.
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