Assessing impact of resource capacity of geography departments on student employability skills development in public universities in Ghana

Abstract

Educators assume that training institutions that are under-resourced are not likely to attain their goal of equipping their graduates with the requisite skills for the world of work. They further assume that resource capacities exist in the human, physical and other resources of academic departments. In order for geography departments to make judicious use of their resource capacities, this study explored and described the types of resource capacities that geography departments possess to train students in employable skills. The study in the main, adopted a qualitative research design, using focus group discussions and open-ended interview schedules for data collection. Different categories of respondents were included in the study: 36 students, 4 instructors, 4 employers, 19 support staff and 19 geography employees. The study institutions were the geography departments at the University of Ghana, University of Cape Coast, and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, all in Ghana. Results of the study showed that the geography departments deployed their resources to varying degrees to train students to acquire employable skills. Most of the employable skills that students acquired were developed to a moderate level. Based on the findings of the study, the study recommended that the geography departments formulate policies to improve the quality of all five capacity resources in the geography departments.