Study identifies huge need for faculty to meet policy goals

Ghana will immediately need an additional 3,410 faculty who are PhD holders to achieve the government’s desired teacher-student ratio, and as many as five times that number if the country is to achieve its policy goals by 2025, according to a new joint pilot study by the Association of African Universities (AAU), Education Sub Saharan Africa (ESSA) and the Population Reference Bureau (PRB).

In terms of the government’s policy goals for the higher education sector, all faculty at public universities should hold PhDs and there should be an equal proportion of female and male students. In addition to a 5% per annum growth in enrolments, there should be an overall student to teacher ratio of 27:1 in the humanities and 18:1 in the sciences in public universities, and a 60:40 ratio in science versus social sciences and humanities student enrolment.

The Demographics of African Faculty pilot in Ghana is an attempt to establish an analysis of the numbers of faculty by age, gender, field or department, role and rank in Ghana and suggest projections of future possible supply and demand.

Surging student enrolment

According to the study, conducted between February and August 2018 and based on data covering 2014-15 to 2016-17, student enrolment is surging at tertiary education institutions across Sub-Saharan Africa, but institutions have a “difficult road ahead” to ensure qualified faculty to meet national education policy goals.

The study puts the number of full-time teaching staff in public universities in 2017 at 4,084, with only 149 of these holding a PhD. Across the entire tertiary sector made up of 213 private and public institutions, including colleges, there were 11,906 faculty. Total student enrolment in all institutions in 2017 was 353,045.

The study indicated that the country needed an additional 3,410 faculty with PhDs if the country was to meet its student-teacher ratio goals in 2017 and that meeting the goals by 2025 and “assuming some modest enrolment progress may require five times the number of faculty”.

Gender imbalance

Furthermore, while overall age distribution of faculty appeared to be reasonably balanced, a deeper look revealed that gender inequality persists among staff in certain academic subjects and levels of seniority. In the 2016-17 academic year, only 10 out of 120 faculty with the rank of professor at public universities were women.

Hence, the study found that 71% of new public university staff must be female to achieve a 50:50 gender balance.

It is hoped that the study will contribute to laying the ground for evidence-based policy planning in the area, and establish a methodology to be used in other African countries.

Drawing on three components to analyse the current demographics of faculty, which included stakeholder meetings and interviews, an overview of the policy context, and existing administrative data collected by National Council for Tertiary Education, the study looked ahead to the potential challenges in meeting existing policy goals in an environment of rising student enrolment.

ESSA said the report was aimed at supporting both government and universities to develop targeted recruitment and retention strategies for faculty as well as informing the government's plans for managing overall capacity to meet the demands of a broad range of stakeholders and create jobs in the education sector itself.

Learning models

In addition, it would help the government to “decide how much it wants to invest in science and technology, not just with regard to investment in research but also in producing the right level of learning models, which not only make students more employable but improve the efficiency of the system”.

The study said there were few national, regional or continental systems on which to model planning for the size and specialisation of faculty in accordance with anticipated student enrolment growth and policy goals.

“Addressing these challenges, however, will likely create a large number of high-quality jobs for PhD graduates. More importantly, it will support growing student enrolment in tertiary education and contribute to broader economic and societal development for Ghana,” the study said.