Professor Emeritus Ivan Addae-Mensah, a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana (UG), says Ghana must ensure that technical universities concentrate on their specific areas of expertise and avoid ‘mission creep.’
‘Mission creep’ refers to the gradual or incremental expansion of an intervention, project, or mission beyond its original scope, focus, or goals, a phenomenon often triggered by initial success. This is generally seen as undesirable because each success tends to breed more ambitious interventions until a final failure occurs, halting the intervention entirely.
The former Vice-Chancellor of UG asserts that these universities risk losing their values when they deviate from their objectives.
He gave the caution during an interview with Bernard Avle on The Point of View on Wednesday.
“In fact, in principle, I love this idea of technical universities. The only problem is that they seem also to be falling into the same trap of mission creep where they also want to be like the old ones. Sooner or later you will see Sunyani Technical University wanting to do law instead of focusing on the niche that has been created for them like is in Germany,” he said.
“We shouldn’t allow our technical universities to become like any other,” he stated.