This essay is one of a series of essays that express my indignation about how certain aspects/ institutions of Ghana are being managed by people who should have known better.

The ordinary Ghanaian believes that the University of Ghana is one of the best in the world. The best university in Ghana, the University of Ghana is among the top 15 in Africa and among the top 2 in West Africa.

The general feeling is that the University of Ghana (UG) delivers the best learning environment comparable to the best schools in other parts of the world. Scholars of this school are highly respected and its students are expected to be the best graduates that we can employ.

The grim reality is that the University of Ghana is far from this perception of excellence that the general populace accords it.

I hope officials at the University of Ghana will accept this critique in good faith and strive to make every Ghanaian proud of them.

What I term as soft infrastructure comprise of scholarships, internet infrastructure, research infrastructure, libraries, lecturers’ attitude and the mode of teaching.

The state of soft infrastructure is in an abysmal state at the premises of the University of Ghana. Research grants disbursed to post graduate students pursuing master’s studies is $100 (500 cedi) per student. This grant comes from the state.

At some of the most prestigious universities in South Africa post graduate students receive around $10,000 per year to conduct research. Judging by the funds being allocated to research, one can discern why some South African universities are leading in some areas of knowledge globally.

In 2010 when I was an undergrad at UG, there were many wifi facilities and computers on campus for student use. But these were non-functional most of the time.

The many wifi networks were too slow to conduct any meaningful engagement or one had to queue for long hours to use a school desktop. Sometimes it was best to avoid wasting so much time just to get a connection.

 In 2017, a lecturer I had spoken to, to complete an online reference for my scholarship application explained that he could not access the website of the Rodes scholarship after spending hours on his computer at campus due to slow internet connection.

In 2015, I sent an email to the graduate schools of UG, KNUST, and UDS. I am still waiting for the response to those emails in 2020.

In 2017 I found myself a post graduate student at the University of Cape Town (UCT). And students of my department spent a significant proportion of their time studying from the internet especially YouTube. My department was ranked 10^th globally in 2017.

UCT had only one wifi network for all its students, and an over abundant supply of computers for all students. In that same year I downloaded a YouTube video on economics on a busy school day. It took just 5 minutes to download one GB of video.

Additionally emails sent to lecturers and other school officials are generally replied to within 24hrs and in extreme cases within 4 working days; not forever as pertain to UG.

At UG the emphasis is not on equipping students with the right skill set.

I spoke to a colleague who held an Mphil degree in Social Work from UG. And I was surprised to find that he had no knowledge of how to use data analysis software for research. He said research results were arrived at manually.

To compute a mean statistic, a student at the Social Work Department of UG goes through his questionnaires manually and strikes out with pencil numbers/responses that are non-recurring, and that was how he arrived at a mean statistic for his research.

I was shocked at this revelation.

The University of Ghana platform for searching for journal papers is archaic. It doesn’t efficiently find many papers in other journals.

I suggest UG spends resources to acquire something similar to UCT’s Search Primo. Teaching and learning on UG is not research centered.

In 2018, I had only completed my first year at UCT. I found myself supervising a final year Mphil student with ISSER briefly. He explained to me that his lecturer was too busy to respond to him. I wondered how busy his lecturer could be that she could not supervise his work.

The results were an abysmal piece of research. He has completed his studies and currently holds an Mphil from UG. I would hesitate to employ such a graduate who didn’t look like he had a thorough understanding of what he had studied.

He holds an Mphil, but what does he really understand by research? Universities in Ghana have churned out people who do not seem to understand what they were thought and yet they have certificates to prove it.

The University of Ghana needs to invest in digital libraries, because more and recent research is being churned out daily and annually. UG’s reliance on paper libraries results in students not having access to the most recent research.

Lectures’ attitude is the most surprising. At UG lecturers find all manner of excuses not to write a reference letter for a student.

In 2019 I accompanied a colleague to the Dept of Economics and Linguistics to request reference letters. Some lecturers will say they don’t remember a student and thus cannot write a reference letter; some lecturers gave the excuse that they were currently examiners; others explained that they did not teach that student.

My question is, how can you possibly remember the face of every student in a 300 classroom atmosphere for the many classes that you teach annually for as long as you teach? And what happens if your memory fades?

 At the linguistics department, I lost my patience for these nonsensical excuses and explained to the dept secretary that this can never happen at UCT.

At UCT, I only need to send an email and the reference letter will be emailed to me perhaps within a week. She responded by saying that UG is not at the level of UCT and thus I should let UG be.

Frankly, UG is a thousand places below UCT on the world ranking.

At UG filth is the norm in many places. The washrooms are extremely filthy at the libraries, halls of residence, lecture halls and on the campus. Because of this some staff lockup some washrooms for their exclusive use.

In other areas staff give the excuse that there is the shortage of water. In halls of residence, the dirt soaked window meshes that have never been cleaned once they are installed are changed annually and the halls are repainted every year. And the stench that greets you in these halls is testament to the state of cleanliness.

I hope UG will rise to the occasion and implement pertinent changes to truly be on a path to excellence.

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The writer is a Master's degree holder in economics from the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa.  He has experience working on trade, development and research projects in  West Africa.