Converting Polytechnics to Technical Universities: Boosting or Sinking Technical/Vocational Education

The Commonwealth Association of Polytechnics and Technical Universities in Africa (CAPA) has advised African countries that if they genuinely want to develop the continent, they must prioritise technical/vocational. The Association drummed that message throughout its international Conference in Mombasa, Kenya, held from June 5-11, 2016. The theme of the Conference was timely: Strategic Involvement of TVET Institutions towards the Attainment of Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals in Africa. The major objective was to explore the role of technical/vocational education in Africa in the pursuit and achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as its overarching role in the actual development of the Continent.

A concurrent message to African technical institutions bordered on a reprimand: You have done enough talking; it is time for implementation, so start acting now (emphasis mine). That message was a poignant reminder that we have been stuck at the talking stage. So much time is spent re-planning/re-inventing existing ideas instead of bracing up for implementation and innovation. We develop elaborate policies and learning programmes, yet when it comes to implementation, we hmm and ahh, and scratch our heads then dream up the same ideas in new sets of package, so that we can remain at the planning stage, or we implement in bizarre manner such that we regress rather than progress. We have failed to utilise the system to produce human resources whose performance can improve self, community, industry, nation, and continent.

One keynote speaker, Mr. Manu Chandria, a renowned industrialist, stated that China has been able to create a new “united states” within thirty years. It achieved that feat through technical/vocational education. Mr. Chandria is right. China has become the hub of outsourcing for the globe. It has developed skills to produce top-notch quality goods for the West and inferior ones for Africans who do not value standards. It has something for everyone and every country. From toothpick through to furniture for parliament houses, call on China and it will deliver. Every commodity outsourced or exported from China is a testimony of the Chinese technical/vocational system. Put together the diverse good and services the world receive from that country, and one gets a picture of a solid system which empowers its citizens through skill acquisition. Of course, the citizens’ practices enrich China.

Prudently, it has developed and perfected its research enterprise, through which it not only matches services to needs but explores innovative ways to address human needs, local and international. Evidently, China’s technical/vocational system does not operate on mediocrity or superficiality. It aspires for intellectual and professional excellence and demonstrates such through practice. Chinese output sells China. They can deliver! Definitely, China develops its human potential through education.

Rightly, Mr Chandria harped on the human potential that can be developed through technical education, if the system will be genuinely improved and allowed to work. The industrialist called on African technical/vocational systems to halt the feet dragging and develop human potential through genuine investment in human capital, realistic curricula, and competent training, in order to raise Africa from its status of the least developed continent. In other words, instead of importing and buying from China, Africans should invest genuinely in education, operate current curricula and pursue actual learning. Africans should prioritise action and applied research to improve its learning systems and use such to chart national development. There are key lesson for this country.

Ghana’s decision to convert its polytechnics to technical universities has coincided with the World’s resolve to tackle sustainable development in an attempt to bring appreciable quality to human existence. The emphasis on equal and quality education is appreciated by all, since education improves the lot of a person. However, only quality education empowers beneficiaries. When institutions and nations merely pretend to educate, they produce human liabilities who greedily take from communities and nation instead of working passionately for community and national development. When educated ones are unable to apply knowledge for the concurrent benefits of self and community, they render education an eyesore, Ghana’s current situation.

A cursory look at the nation’s teeming mass of unemployed youth, skilled and unskilled on one hand, and the mediocre and under-performance in the workforce on the other hand, can convince one that education in this country has failed woefully, and as such drastic changes are needed for remedy. Technical/vocational education is in the centre of that sorry spectacle, because it trains the workforce which performs the technical, middle level and artisanal jobs across all sectors, which performance might be used to determine the quality of training imparted by the institutions, and the rate of development it can bring to the nation. As to the development engendered so far, the government, learning institutions and industry, beneficiaries, individuals and the general public can make their own judgments: mostly, educated people with hardly employable skills. Yet instead of crying over spilt milk; we desire to pursue competence, hence, the intended conversion of polytechnics to technical universities.

Target Quality Education

The reality is that a mere name change will not improve technical/vocational education in the country. The only avenue to genuine improvement is that this conversion must be development-oriented, and not from any myopic or jaundiced motivation. Quality education does not happen by itself; it is strategized and carefully executed. Quality education is not rushed or selectively implemented. It is approached holistically, and realistically, through the planning, execution, evaluation and review stages. Simply put, quality education is a painstaking effort, human-oriented. Any educational review or reform that can be rushed is superficial, not genuine, certainly not for community, national, and continental goodwill.

In other words, when continent, nation and community become the target for development, individuals therein become automatic beneficiaries, because initiatives will be community-oriented, rather than egotistical. In short, quality technical education is a strategy for sustainable employment and benefits. It empowers recipients to exploit natural resources for the benefit of society. Westerners have been practicing that for centuries. China has achieved that. Kenyans are treading that path. Such must be our goals for this conversion: No other motive is acceptable. No other motive will legitimise the existence of technical universities in the country. No other motive will yield the desirable change for the nation and continent. For a change, educational review in this country ought to be about human capital, not about politics.

In spite of the disadvantaged position of technical/vocational education, the nation has acknowledged that it anchors national development if it imparts the relevant skills to trainees. Appropriately therefore, all the polytechnics are expected to convert their regular curricula to competency-based training (CBT) for career creation, and to ensure that current and marketable training is imparted to learners. Therein lies one fundamental challenge; generally, the curriculum developers have not been trained. Curriculum is developed by well-equipped groups. We must take a cue from Kenya. It has established the TVET Curriculum Development, Assessment and Certification Council which trains technical institutions for CBT programmes and monitors their performance. It has structured a training schedule for all technical institutions. The Chair of the Council informed me that the Council has trained seven hundred teachers and is systematically moving from one institution to another. Kenya planned very well and is executing gradually. One can see the results from local performance, industry included. Training polytechnics teachers for CBT curriculum design ought to have been Ghana’s fundamental move for one primary reason.

The polytechnic system has seen a huge explosion of human resource development in the last two decades, yet the training has been theoretically skewed. The system has failed to ensure a proper alignment of theory and practice in its classrooms. Consequently, the practical content in the various training programme has gone downhill. It continues to produce job seekers instead of job creators. Products’ skills do not match national and industrial needs.

Even industrial attachment time has reduced. In some programmes, there is zero practical training in the classroom, because teachers cannot align theory with practice. In many disciplines, the polytechnics have been offering raw training like the universities, replicating university programmes instead of developing hands-on version of such courses. These are the same teachers who are drawing the CBT curriculum, when they have not been given the necessary orientation. A cross-section of teachers has already predicted that at the end of the day, it will be the same regular curriculum labelled as CBT. That admission is a seal for further demise of technical/vocational education in Ghana.

Of course, quality education should begin from the pre-school through to the tertiary and higher institutions. Quality rests in accurate and timely content delivered at the appropriate times, by qualified personnel, and in the right amounts. The nation has failed to achieve zero literacy rate due to its inability to attain Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE). The foundation level of education in this country is extremely weak; hence, it negates whatever attempts are made to improve secondary and tertiary education. Yet, instead of focusing on strengthening literacy and education at the foundation level, governments opt for the easy way out, giving free school uniforms and school sandals, vehicles and buildings, effectively diverting limited funds from where it belongs. Whilst these provisions are necessary, if they are not founded on timely, accurate knowledge, they fail to be effective.

That is the reason industries are receiving graduates who possess barely employable skills, and that cuts across polytechnics and universities. The literacy and mathematical literacy skills of secondary school graduates are barely discernible. An appreciable percentage that enters the tertiary classroom are not equipped for the academic challenges therein, hence, they cope badly. Some stakeholders have explained the situation thus: “Garbage in, garbage out”. Due to the disadvantaged position of Technical/Vocational education, the polytechnics receives the greater number of the weak products from the secondary level, who complete professional courses yet fail to acquire the necessary sophistication to create their own jobs or be attracted to diligent and proactive employers or institutions. A mere conversion will not change that. Yet, even when students lack the necessary knowledge, diligent tertiary institutions could design learning structures to make up for the knowledge gap, whilst improving the base.

Due to the knowledge handicap that results from an extremely fragile foundation of education, the learning systems are sapped of intellectual innovation necessary for addressing human needs of the state. Again, the polytechnics bear a greater percentage of the blame. Quality applied research is at its minimum; programmes have not been modelled to equip the youth with sustainable employment skills. Consequently, the conversion can occur, but the institutions will not function like technical universities such as Dresden, which characteristically engage in high-powered level research, pursue intellectual excellence, or explore natural resources to better human existence. And therein lies another fundamental challenge for this conversion: The polytechnics are not equipped, at the human and infrastructural levels for technical university work, and until these fundamental challenges are addressed, the conversion remains in name only.

Aiming for Competence

The CBT curriculum is pivotal in this conversion; in five years, graduate competence would be the determinant of the success or failure of technical universities in the country, per the employability or otherwise of the products. Some engineering programmes were converted a few years ago. Occasionally, one or two from the existing CBT programmes are consulted at the discretion of the schools within polytechnics. Technically, the teachers currently developing the curricula have not been trained for that technical role, yet they are engaged in the most fundamental aspect of the teaching/learning system. For majority of the programmes, it is a struggle which might not just yield the desirable objective.

Considering that products of the current CBT programmes have not been tracked on the job market to determine their overall effectiveness in the industry, using CBT trainees to train other teachers is neither an academic nor an astute move. Besides, each discipline must have its own CBT approach. A serious move would have been to track beneficiaries of the CBT programmes, using industrial parameters, review their performance in order to better classroom practices. The improved curriculum would then become a model after which various curricula could be fashioned for other disciplines. Such an approach would render the review learner-driven, not teacher-driven. Such an approach would signal that the nation desires to train its youth for dignified employment. Such a meticulous approach would actualise improvement of polytechnic education. In absence of that, departments are designing curricula in order to give teachers classroom contact hours.

Polytechnics have been scurrying for teacher upgrade in recent times, but that upgrade has seen a quantum upsurge since the quest for technical universities set in. Yet the harsh reality that human resource development has not necessarily translated into quality training, theoretically or in practice, is another fundamental challenge for the system and Nation. The system embarked on teacher upgrading without charting a path for that upgrade. Training ought to have been focused on improving hands-on training. Emphasis ought to have been on performance in practical training, not on mere certification. Currently, a cross-section of polytechnic teachers does not understand the practical reality of the polytechnic classroom.

Communities elsewhere that have succeeded in transforming technical/vocational education, and higher learning in general, prioritise programmes that meet community, industrial and learner demands. On the contrary, Ghana does not invest what it ought to in order to design quality needs-based curricula. Over the years, governments have deliberately selected provisions that fail to strengthen vocational/technical education. Cutting corners in the past several decades has boomerang now and culminated in a failed educational system which is now successfully producing half-baked graduates and a mounting teeming mass of unemployable youth.

The unemployment situation currently facing the nation is not solely because government fails to create employment. Ironically, the high unemployment rate runs concurrently with employment mismatch. There are jobs for which there are no skills. That situation cannot be blamed on government alone; learning institutions are partly to blame. As a nation, we have marginalised research. We have failed to use education and research to address community and national needs. We have failed to utilise action research to sharpen teaching/learning and evaluation for human and community development.

Subsequently, we have not managed to master investigative approaches through applied research, which approaches could have guided us to hone skills across community and industrial levels. We have been satisfied with merely churning out graduates, applauding ourselves for numbers instead of tracking quality output among graduates. We have reduced educational standards so much that we are currently, mostly, producing educated illiterates across all learning levels. The resultant insidious national plague is producing, in numbers, intellectuals who can barely put thought together or perform. The contemporary global employer seeks competence, not certificates.

If technical/vocational education had been guided by applied and scientific research in the past, it could have discovered solution or effective approaches to socio-cultural and economic challenges such as safe waste management, to name one. Such knowledge could now be used to further refine knowledge and practices, even among the unskilled. Then beneficiaries would be empowered to create jobs. One educationist has lamented that polytechnic students currently complete autonomous courses in entrepreneurship and seek government employment. On the whole, the system has failed to fulfil its mandate of imparting hands-on-training to learners. Beneficiaries trust paper qualification for progress rather than hands-on expertise, because the workforce, largely, promotes by certificate, not by practice. That is one of the reasons the system has failed to produce competent personnel.

Target Technical/Vocational Education

So far, the reasons advanced for technical university have largely bordered on the superficiality rather than academic. Whilst universities are apprehensive that the polytechnics do not qualify for university status, the polytechnic fraternity is happy because it will enjoy a university status. Polytechnic students are happy that they will be university graduates. The core issues, however, ought to be academic and realistic investment in the system, and until those are genuinely attended to, the system will not improve. The United Kingdom currently spends about £4,000 on a technical/vocational student. How does that compare with Ghanaian funding for such students? The Committee that recommended timelines commented on the huge disparity in funding between Ghana and the German institutions they visited. It rightly suggested a gradual approach, but it should not have recommended its commencement in September 2016, considering the diverse academic challenges facing the system. The approach adopted for this conversion indicates that we are neither learning from the past nor targeting human capital.

Polytechnic staff can pile up all the degrees under the sun. Workshops and laboratories and classrooms can be furnished with the state of the art tools and equipment. Programmes can be re-packaged in the most appealing forms. If the teaching and the taught are not oriented for practical training, all the other resources will not yield skilled products. Teachers must be submerged in the CBT concept, regardless of their disciplines of expertise. They must have absolute control over the alignment of theory and practice in their subject areas. Only such enlightened teachers can motivate learners to appreciate the career and academic paths offered by the polytechnics.

Currently, the average secondary school graduate does not regard the polytechnic as a legitimate path for academic and professional progression. New Zealand can assert that 44 % of its annual 65,000 secondary school graduates opt for polytechnics or trades training, whilst 38 % enrol in the universities. The reverse happens in Ghana. Averagely, secondary school graduates target the university; the polytechnic is a second best. In 2013, two streams of secondary school graduates were admitted into tertiary institutions in the country. Whilst the universities were brimming with applications, the polytechnics bled, because the Ministry of Education insisted on a minimum entry requirement of C6 in core subjects.

The polytechnics had to negotiate a deal for conditional admission before they could fill their classrooms. Admission requirements had to be lowered for entrants, and that situation has since prevailed. Consequently, polytechnic classrooms are populated by a high percentage of students whose literacy and mathematical literacy skills are extremely weak, making tertiary work impossible. How can the polytechnic be attractive to the youth when they witness that lower academic performers are admitted into the system? Most importantly, how can such poor performers engage in the high-powered level research for innovation that has characterised contemporary technical universities in other communities?

A cross-section of the polytechnic system has managed to convince itself that technical/vocational learners do not need strong skills in English language in order to enter polytechnic classrooms because they are going to pursue vocation, not grammar. A fallacy. In 2011, the United Kingdom extensively reviewed its technical/vocational educational system. It made strong language skills a linchpin. Learners need to obtain grade A-C to qualify for enrolment. Students who perform poorly are expected to concentrate on developing their language skills. The rationale is simple: Students must be well-equipped for the academic challenges of the tertiary classroom. A strong grasp of the core subjects provides an appreciable foundation for tertiary work, which foundation makes students motivated learners. In view of that, New Zealand has actually upped its literacy requirement for the tertiary classroom, but Ghana compromises its literacy requirements for numbers due to poor funding. The compromise is breeding in the polytechnic classroom elements who can barely read or write. Such elements are not motivated learners; learning is a chore. One cannot establish a technical university system on such a porous human foundation.

Commitment is also lacking from other stakeholders which is the reason the system has failed to live up to expectation, and will continue as such in spite of any label change, if issues are not legitimately addressed. Let us begin with an honest tracer studies in industry in order to determine what has worked or failed, what industry requires and what they can do to help. Based on such assessment, government will know the right type of investment and the appropriate breakdown. Administrative machineries in the polytechnic will be able to align theory and practice in human resource placement, aided by a Competency-Based Training schedule. The systems will design a variety of programmes, tertiary and non-tertiary, so that the right academic elements can be placed in the appropriate academic programmes, with the necessary flexible timelines. Industry must also demonstrate strong commitment and offer necessary internship to learners. The polytechnics must be obliged to own the changes. If such a system could be upheld, it would attract focused learners, not the failed. Only then would beneficiaries be sustainable job creators.

A motivated and committed team of teachers and learners would pursue mastery of skills, which could lead to excellence in performance across all sectors. Such excellence would endow performers with secured employable skills, per SDG objectives. In such an enabling environment, the trapped would be wrenched from the claws of abject poverty. The nation would tread the path of genuine development, the essence of technical/vocational education. Mediocrity and non-performance have no place in technical universities. The crucial need for strategic planning and implementation for this conversion cannot be over-emphasised.

So far, we have been hurdling toward this conversion rather than run a marathon in order to address entrenched fundamental challenges of the polytechnic system. No name-change will transform the system. The President of Ghana has rightly commented that the nation needs to move away from the hitherto grammar education and engage in competency-based education. Again, that move requires genuine strategy and the willpower for implementation. I hope he cushions that move with the needed investment. The system must aspire for excellence and international standards.

Appreciable structures are already in place; the challenge is making them work for the system. Instead of aspiring for excellence, the system has chosen to be satisfied with mediocrity. It has leaned toward superficiality rather than genuine academic and professional excellence. Mastery of skills has not been prioritised. Applied and action research which could help to evaluate and improve upon academic work have been, largely, neglected. Academic and professional guidance and counselling do not receive the necessary attention. Worst of all, monitoring for teaching and evaluation is executed haphazardly, all of which situations have compromised quality teaching/learning and evaluation. Unscrupulous teachers manipulate the system for purely selfish reasons and go scot-free. Consequently, an appreciable cross-section of polytechnic products possesses certificates they cannot defend. Already, a section of industry does not trust polytechnic 1^st class certificates.

The youth should be the target of this review; we should strive to endow them with sustainable marketable skills, not certify them for professional indignity. Polytechnics should target programmes that can attract the youth. Instead of competing with the universities over programmes, it must package practical courses that would set them apart as alternative legitimate paths for learning and practice. Polytechnic programmes should not be designed so that teachers can have jobs; rather they should be packaged for sustained employment benefits of trainees. Motivated human resources can utilise all other resources effectively, whereas poor human resources would underutilise the best of teaching/learning resources. If the legitimate issues raised here were addressed first, it would automatically transform the polytechnic system, and render the transition to technical university a very smooth activity.

Again, technical/vocational education is not for non-performers; it is not for apathetic learners. It definitely is not for shoddy teachers. Technical/vocational training is meant for intelligent ones who desire to earn quality existence through genuine practice. Such ones practice excellence, not mediocrity. Technical/vocational education is the lifeline of communities and nations, because it trains technicians and artisans who perform core services, in domestic, public/commercial services. Since all in the communities solicit such services, a substandard technical/vocational learning system endangers the entire community.

The poor services we are all encountering across the country provide the sharpest statement that technical/vocational system has failed. That reality should motivate us to strengthen the system. All ego should be pocketed. Stakeholders must focus on quality services, returns for national training and investment — dignified employment for people, the youth especially, sustainable employment and (extreme) poverty eradication, sustained GDP growth, to mention these genuine reasons for action. If we had such an agenda, this conversion would not be rushed. Yes, it was a campaign manifesto, but practical governments know that when campaign manifestoes cannot be realistically implemented, it benefits society to stall such promises. Parliament itself acknowledges the challenges; therefore, the focus should be on addressing the fundamental challenges not rush a change which makes even major stakeholders extremely apprehensive.

If we rush this change in September, we would be making a purely hollow move, which would further sink, not boost technical/vocational education in the country.