The Minister of Education, Professor Naana Jane Opoku Agyemang has called for an immediate stop to the sale of handouts by lecturers to students in the country’s tertiary institutions especially the public ones.
According to her, the practice does not only place further financial burden on students and parents, but also muffled research, originality and independent work by students and lecturers alike.
In an address read for her at a congregation of the Kumasi Polytechnic last week, Professor Opoku Agyeman stated that the practice must stop immediately in the tertiary institutions.
Lecture handouts are usually a compilation of different topics to be treated in a semester mostly from books written by other famous writers into a pamphlet which students are forced to buy at a very high prices by lecturers. Some of the pamphlet may also come about as a result of a personal research by the lecture.
She pointed out that, the government had heard the unfair treatment being meted out to students who failed to purchase handouts made by some lecturers and said the cries of students against the practice had reached the corridors of government.
The Minister said lecturers could publish their notes into books and place them at the bookshops for sale for interested students to buy without being forced to do so.
The Minister advised all graduates to pursue honesty, sincerity, selflessness, hard-work and dedication, in order to be very successful in whatever endeavor they would find themselves.
Professor Kwasi Obiri-Danso, Chairman of the Polytechnic Council, said the focus of the school was to remain as a true hands-on practical training institution where graduates would be trained to acquire state-of-the-art skills for industrial growth and development.