Sir Sam Jonah has challenged the University of Cape Coast (UCC) to become the first university in Africa to establish a full faculty of degree-awarding vocational education.

He argued that higher education must shift from producing graduates who only possess knowledge to producing graduates with practical competence.

Speaking at the installation of the university’s new Vice-Chancellor, Professor John Gatsi Aheto, on Saturday, August 1, Sir Sam Jonah said the rapid rise of artificial intelligence demands a complete rethink of the purpose of universities.

“I am proposing today that the University of Cape Coast become the first university in Africa to build a full faculty of degree-awarding vocational education — Bachelor and Master degrees in Applied Skills, with the rigour of the academy and the soul of the workshop.”

He said Ghana should stop treating vocational education as a lesser path and instead integrate it into the highest levels of academic training.

“I know my countrymen. I know that if we simply build vocational institutes, Ghanaians will not come, because Ghanaians want degrees. Very well. Then let us stop fighting the addiction and start prescribing it wisely.”

Sir Sam Jonah painted a vision of degree programmes in renewable energy, aquaculture, construction, agri-food, healthcare, the creative industries and Human-AI Collaboration.

Under the model, he said, students would not graduate without demonstrating real competence.

“A Bachelor of Applied Skills in Renewable Energy Systems — where no one graduates who has not personally installed and maintained a working solar installation.”

He added that a degree in aquaculture should require students to produce “a functioning fish farm, audited like a business,” while engineering assessments should move beyond theory.

“Not ‘describe a pump’, but ‘here is a broken pump; the village is waiting; fix it.’ The certificate and the competence, reunited at last.”

Sir Sam Jonah said Africa’s education system has for too long rewarded memorisation instead of practical ability.

“Too many of our graduates leave university having memorised much and built little.”

He warned that graduates entering today’s economy will increasingly be judged by what they can do rather than what they know.

“The world our graduates are entering will not ask them what they know. It will ask them what they can do.”

He also dismissed the growing debate about so-called “useless degrees”, insisting the problem lies elsewhere.

“There are no useless degrees. There are only degrees that have been separated from usefulness — and it is our job to reunite them.”

Drawing inspiration from Germany’s apprenticeship system and reforms in China and the United States, Sir Sam Jonah said Ghana cannot afford to stand still while other countries reshape their universities for the age of artificial intelligence.

“The world’s largest economies are tearing up their prospectuses. What excuse do we have for merely polishing ours?”

Calling directly on Professor Aheto and the University Council, he urged them to seize the moment and make UCC the institution that leads a new era of African higher education.

“Let the debate begin tomorrow in every senior common room in this country. I welcome it. But let history record where the question was first put.”