The Catholic University College Ghana (CUCG) has set up an Endowment Fund aimed at meeting the regulatory requirement to receive a Presidential Charter.
A Presidential Charter allows the university to award its own degrees and frees it from the need to be affiliated to a degree-awarding institution.
CUCG, which has been in existence for 15 years, is currently affiliated to the University of Ghana.
Speaking Friday at a ceremony to launch the Fund, the Vice Chancellor of the University College, Professor Daniels Kwabena Obeng-Ofori observed that CUCG has a lot to offer hence the need for the Presidential Charter.
According to him, “CUCG is preparing very soon to finally put in this application for a presidential Charter to become an autonomous University to issue its own certificates.”
“To be an affiliated institution is a very terrible experience,” he stated, stressing: “Nobody should dream to be that. It is very terrible.”
Entreating the Catholic community to support the University by making donations to the Fund, Professor Obeng-Ofori said CUCG is constrained by lack of funding “at the time it needs funding most to compete aggressively with competitors.”
He said running a University is a highly capital intensive venture and that it is against the norms and conventions by various National Council for Tertiary Education to finance tertiary education with solely student fees.
“This is an incontrovertible fact. It doesn’t happen anywhere in the world,” he stated.
Despite the financing challenges, he said CUCG will continue to offer enviable academic excellence in a context dedicated to service to humanity.
He said: “Having worked in Legon for almost 20 years; when I went to CUCG, I was pleasantly surprised by the academic excellence at the University.”
“It is not just a perception that Catholic Schools in terms of academic excellence are on top. It is a fact. I’ll be the first to acknowledge this, having worked for all these years in non-Catholic institutions of higher learning. In terms of academic excellence CUCG stands tall,” he added.
The assistance of the Catholic Community to the Fund, according to the President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference, will “revolutionise the quality of education in this country [Ghana].”
“Because as soon as we have the Presidential Charter, we will also be able to set up a number of schools where people will come out from with a great difference,” he added.
Launching the fund, the former CEO of Ecobank, Albert Essien pledged a seed amount of $20.000.00 with a call on the University to device “much more creative ways” of raising finances.
At the 2017 Annual General Meeting of the Ghana Catholic Bishops Conference(GCBC), it was resolved that in view of the challenges facing the Catholic University at Fiapre, the GCBC would support the Catholic University by soliciting for funds through its members, to help raise standards at the university.
Source: Ghana/Starrfmonline.com/103.5FM
