Professor Kwesi Yankah, Minister of State in charge of Tertiary Education says that government’s decision to merge the Ghana Institute of Journalism(GIJ), the Ghana Institute of Languages(GIL) and the National Film and Television Institute (NAFTI) into one tertiary Institute is to enable them to acquire a university license.
According to the Minister, though the three institutions have applied to be Universities they do not meet the standard.
In an interview with Citinews monitored by PrimeNewsGhana, Professor Yankah said “Certainly it is one of the legislative instruments we are considering because GIJ applied to be a university separately and NAFTI also applied to be a university. â€
“Sitting back we realized that maybe none of them on its own has fully satisfied the requirement to be a university, but if you merge them, they can become various colleges or faculties within one university as it has been done in several parts of the world,†he said.
Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, in November 2018 noted that the government has started processes to merge three of the country’s public tertiary institutions into one, that is Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ), the National Film and Television Institute (NAFTI) and the Ghana Institute of Languages (GIL).
The consolidated institutions would be known as the National Institute of Communication and Media Art.
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Presenting the 2019 budget statement in Parliament the Finance Minister said,
“Mr. Speaker, processes have also commenced to merge the Ghana Institute of Languages, National Film and Television Institute (NAFTI) and Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ) into the National Institute of Communication and Media Arts. In 2019, the necessary regulatory Bill will be put together with stakeholder consultations,†he said.
The Finance Minister, Mr Ofori-Atta told Parliament that the move to consolidate the three institutions forms part of government’s commitment to expand tertiary education opportunities to meet increasing demand and the skill needs of the country.
Amongst the three institutions, only GIJ has been granted a Presidential Charter to award its own degrees, diplomas and certificates for programmes accredited by the National Accreditation Board, while NAFTI does so due to its affiliation with the University of Ghana.