GTUC Set to Admit 10,000 Free SHS Graduates

Vice President of the Ghana Telecom University, Professor Isaac Blankson says his university is readying itself to absorb about 10,000 of the nearly 280,000 students who make up the first batch beneficiaries of the free Senior High School programme who will be set for graduation in 2021.

Speaking to Citi News on the sidelines of a matriculation event for new students at the Ho campus of the university college, Prof. Blankson said the school is working assiduously at installing new infrastructure while improving the quality of the school’s faculty with a faculty audit aimed at retooling and equipping lecturers.

“The president and management sat down and we are envisioning population rising all the way to about over 10,000 within the shortest possible time. Now you all know that will mean being prepared both infrastructure wise and lecture-wise and so many areas, we started the preparation for that. So within next year and a half or two, we should be seeing an influx in our number of students,” Prof Blankson noted.

Prof. Blankson further indicated that “we have formed a sponsorship project implementation committee that’s looking at infrastructure development, we are talking about building hostels, expanding our classrooms, we are reaching out to Vodafone to see if we can continue to use and expand some of the facilities that we are in. We have talked to the Ministry to see if they can release a few of their properties to us for class purpose so that is being done.”

Touting the contribution of the university to the country’s growth, Prof. Blankson said the school’s products are dotted in areas within the country and across the globe.

He thus called on the government to expedite the passing of the Ghana Telecom University bill which will make the institution a full public university.

“Locally GTUC has contributed a lot to the Human Resource Capital in the country especially with technology-oriented industry. Internationally, we also work with what we call the Trans-national educational partners, Coventry University and others. So we partner with them to also have education that is tailored to our needs. So GTUC is making significant contributions.”

“Another important thing for the passage of bill is that it will make us a fully fledged public university which means we will act and operate like Legon, KNUST, and all other universities. So students will be channelled to us because they wouldn’t consider us a private university anymore, it will be a public university and so we are actually expecting an influx in the number,” Prof. Isaac Blankson pleaded.