The People’s Universities
June 12, 2026
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The Ghanaian Times
Wednesday, October 1964
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The Ghanaian Times
Wednesday, September 16, 1964
The University of Ghana and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology re-open today after the three-month-long vacation. Already in session is the University College of Science Education at Cape Const. All three institutions of higher learning resume with a bigger intake, a tribute to the rapidly expanding educational programme of the Party and Government. They resume too, we hope, with the freshness to show for the pleasant weather in which students and dons alike have enjoyed their holidays. Three months away from the heat and boil must have been sufficient for some deep re-thinking over old chores and to contemplate the future in greater depth. There have been problems at and with the universities. No one is going to ignore that. They have been problems of integration with the aims of the nation. Problems of identification with the supreme tasks facing the people. Problems of confidence and mutual reliance with the people whose taxes go to make up the institutions. And, let it not be missed. there have been problems of misunderstanding. These have sprung from a tradition which has been too long dying — a tradition owing its roots to the climate and social structure in which the first institution of higher learning, the University College at Legon (fore-runner of the University of Ghana) was established and perhaps going deeper to the colonial concept of the educated African cut away from the culture of his people.
Concrete Plans
The colonial concept of the educated man is largely outdated now, thanks to the relentless assault of the Party of the people and the gradual assimilation of the Nkrumaist concept of education glued to the service of the people. But the tradi- tion… that has been something else. What of the future? The period of the long vacation has provided opportunities for clearing backlogs of misunderstandings and apprehensions. Undergraduates of the three universities undertook an orientation course at the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute at Winneba. A few worked with the Party press, in a spirit of mutual trust, contributing as much as they absorbed. Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah received a delegation of the students and their pledge was for a new University living in the present, alive to the demands of a one- Party socialist democracy and loyal to the people’s own trusted leadership which is himself. We have not merely had words. We have had, from the students, concrete plans to show for the turn of the tide. Plans have far advanced for the inauguration of a Party branch at Legon on Sunday and in the other universities later. An Nkrumaist Forum is being formed devoted to the study and advancement of philosophical consciencism, to link the intellectual aims of the Party with the educated youth.
Mutual Trust
It is not the intention of anyone to stifle discussion, to place academic pursuits in a rigid, water-tight compartment. It never has been the intention of the Party to do this, because we recognise that the better result is attained in an atmosphere of frank and free discussion. But frank and free discussion can also have its ruinous sides unless undertaken in the right spirit. in the spirit of objectivity, and under the right conditions, the conditions which give such discussions a contributory value to the advancement, not only of the participants, not only of the Institutions, but, and this is the great thing. of the nation. In the past, the complaint has been the lack of the proper forum for discussions of value, This ought not be the ease now that a Party office is being opened at Legon. The Party branch should provide this forum. in the spirit of mutual trust and not of witch-hunting value and opportunism, in the understanding that each is of to the wheel and that vigilance shall not be carried to the point of alienating others. For our part, we open our pages to the universities, from the students to the Vice Chancellor. Beginning next week, we shall publish a weekly UNIVERSITY FORUM news and views from our institutions of higher learning. Each one is welcome to write to us on the ideological intellectual issues facing us. to us, on our tasks of socialist construction, on the struggle for African Unity world peace. We hope we can move forward together to strengthen…..
