Steady rise in the number of professors and associates

A total of 424 professors and associate professors were employed in Ghana’s public universities in 2013-14, up from 317 the previous year, according to figures released by the National Council for Tertiary Education, or NCTE.

The figures showed considerable increases in the numbers of academics in the country’s nine public universities, at the same time as a slight drop in student numbers.

The total number of teaching staff at public universities in the 2013-14 academic year was 3,728 – up from 2,876 the previous year – including 3,028 males and 592 females.

Of the 424 professors and associate professors in 2013-14, there were 368 men. In the previous year there were 270 male and 47 female professors.

The council reported a total of 734 senior lecturers in public universities in 2013-14, with 638 being men and 98 women. There were 1,956 lecturers including 1,591 males and 365 females, and 33 tutors, two in three of them men.

In the previous year there were 514 senior lecturers – 431 males and 80 females – and 1,490 lecturers including 1,242 males and 80 females. There were also 354 assistant lecturers, with 243 of them men and 111 women, and there was only one male tutor in the nine universities.

According to the NCTE, there were a total of 128,118 students in public universities during the 2013-14 academic year, including 84,937 males and 43,181 females. In the previous year there were 138,414 students, with 89,753 males and 48,661 females.