Veteran businessman and Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, Sir Sam Jonah, has challenged Ghana’s universities to radically rethink higher education.

He is warning that the country risks being left behind as the world’s leading institutions reshape learning for the age of artificial intelligence.

Delivering a speech at the installation of the university’s new Vice-Chancellor, Professor John K. M. Aheto, Sir Sam Jonah said institutions such as MIT, Stanford and Harvard were not merely adding AI courses but redesigning their entire educational models.

He said the transformation underway should serve as a wake-up call for Ghana.

“So consider what the world’s most celebrated universities are doing,” he said.

He noted that MIT had committed $1 billion to establish a new College of Computing with a single objective: “that every student, in every discipline, should graduate as fluent in AI as in his or her own field.”

“They call such graduates ‘bilinguals’. The engineer who speaks AI. The economist who speaks AI. The historian who speaks AI,” he said.

Sir Sam Jonah said Stanford had taken a similar path by creating an institute that brings together all seven of its schools because “AI is far too important to be left to the computer scientists alone.”

He said Harvard had also embraced a bold approach by integrating an AI tutor into its globally renowned CS50 computing course.

“In its famous introductory computing course — CS50, taken by millions around the world — the professors built an AI tutor and placed it beside every single student, guiding each one toward the solution without simply handing it over.”

“A tutor that never sleeps and never closes,” he added.

According to him, the lesson for Ghana is not about matching the financial strength of elite universities but matching their determination.

“MIT’s billion bought buildings; the decision to make every graduate bilingual cost nothing. And Harvard’s tutor runs on the very same tools available, today, to any student on this campus with a connection.”

“Think what that could mean here, where one lecturer may face a hall of hundreds.”

Sir Sam Jonah argued that the gap between Ghanaian universities and the world’s best institutions is no longer defined mainly by resources.

“For most of history, the gap between Cape Coast and Cambridge was defined by resources. For the first time, it is defined chiefly by resolve.”

“The great universities are spending billions to arrive at a destination whose gates now stand open to us as well. It would be an unforgivable failure of imagination not to walk through.”

He urged the University of Cape Coast to seize the opportunity and become the first university in Africa to establish a degree-awarding faculty dedicated to vocational education, blending academic rigour with practical skills.

“The old model of the university is passing. A new one is waiting to be built. Someone will build it,” he said.

“Let it be built here, by us.”